One of my more interesting walks on South Campus occurred the day after this year’s Easter break ended.

It was 60 degrees and sunny, and I had just gotten out of class for the day. I had also gotten myself lost, so I decided to follow my iPhone’s compass back to North Campus rather than to find the appropriate sidewalk. Aside from walking through an open grassy space for half the time and stumbling down a steep embankment into a grove of pine trees (I was still wiping away the excess pine needles that night), it was pretty uneventful.

Was I looking where I was going? Nope. Should I have been? Yes.

At the end of last summer, I was introduced to a technique called echolocation, which is, in the simplest terms, a way for totally blind people such as myself to make sense of our surroundings using sonar – literally using sound to see.

Making a clicking sound with your tongue is the most efficient way of using echolocation. I was immediately hooked when I heard the success stories of blind people who had been doing it for so long that they were able to use it to navigate almost any environment with ease.

In the fall, I decided that, with my final year of formal education ahead of me, I would take the initiative and teach it to myself. I knew it would be hard; I knew it would require a level of patience I wasn’t sure I had; and I knew that walking around campus making loud clicking sounds might draw a few questioning looks and condescendingly sympathetic stares. But I didn’t care. I was like a little kid with a brand new toy, and I wanted to play with it.

Throughout the month of October, one might’ve seen me walking along Summit Avenue toward South Campus, clicking loudly at the trees on the boulevard and the occasional parked car. I thought I was pretty boss, and I probably had a very high opinion of how far along I’d come. For one thing, I didn’t stop to think that the miraculous echoey feedback I was getting might not be the proverbial forest of trees I thought I was seeing; and for another, that was really the only place I bothered to practice, so my perception was probably skewed to begin with. I had just started practicing, though, and we’ve all heard it said that practice makes perfect.

My first legitimate success came later on in the semester when I was able to identify a set of upward-leading stairs from a measurable distance. A few weeks after that, while touring the KARE 11 station, I found I was able to distinguish objects by their density (thank you, soundproof walls). Unfortunately, I was slightly discouraged by the fact that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t echolocate the ever-growing snowbanks along the sidewalk. I came dangerously close to giving up.

And our score reads: impatience 1, patience 0.

After J-Term, I was a bit more comfortable in my own shoes and a lot more eager to force myself to practice. That’s when stuff started getting real. I was suddenly able to identify things from trees and parked cars to street signs, chairs, windows and doors. I was able to identify, though vaguely, some structures in the general area. While I was still clicking a little louder than I needed to, I was definitely making progress.

One of the most amusing things I observed during this time period was other peoples’ takes on what I was doing. There were some who, when I attempted to explain what I was doing to them, recalled Daniel Kish, a blind man who could echolocate while riding a bike. There were some who seemed impressed at what I was doing and seemed to think it was the most amazing thing in the world. Some people would see me hesitate by a sign or walk slowly along a building line, clicking profusely. While they didn’t seem to think I was doing anything out of the ordinary, they took my hesitation to mean that I needed help. One person even asked me if I was looking for squirrels. In retrospect, I wish I would have pointed out to this person that squirrels probably didn’t sit perched atop the light poles between the Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex and the Murray-Herrick Campus Center in the dead of night.

All squirrels aside, I honestly believe I couldn’t have indulged in this self-teaching experience at a better time. I’m staring down the barrel of life in the real world, and I want to have every means of being independent and self-sufficient at my disposal. Most importantly, though, I want to see my surroundings. I want to build – and continue to build – a new perspective on the physical world with which we all interact. I’m confident that there will come a time when I won’t have to click so loudly to see what I want and need to see, and I’m confident that, somewhere down the road, echolocation will be second nature to me.

Is this worth it? Definitely. All the bumps and bruises – and yes, even pine needles – were definitely worth it; and that’s all I need to remind myself as I move forward. So long as I continue to work at it, the world will always be a click away.

Nick Cocchiarella can be reached at cocc7813@stthomas.edu.