There are people who make a living by threading their ways through dark places, and we know this. As a boy I was fascinated by sewer workers, by the idea that men and women can descend beneath the streets and work. I imagined them making their ways in the pitch black like undersea divers in heavy suits with enormous helmets. I was a blind kid. I liked the darkened undersea, stories of Captain Nemo and the television character Mike Nelson, played by Lloyd Bridges on a show called “Sea Hunt”–I used to pretend I was scuba diving in the dark woods behind my house. I was a lonesome and circumspect boy.
The first time I met a guide dog trainer I saw my natural neighbor. He was someone who understood me. Someone who knew what its like to be Mike Nelson with a fogged mask.
Blind since childhood I’d never met a sighted person who “got it” until I met Dave See. I also loved that his name was “See”–what a Dickensian trick! He rang my doorbell, Dave See did, and he announced himself: “I’m Dave See from Guiding Eyes for the Blind.” And so I told him my name was X-Ray Vision from Blinkyville. Why not?
If you work with dogs and people in equal measure, striving to make a team that’s safe in traffic, you must have an empathetic and compound mind. Later I’d see that it’s a bi-cameral mind–as Julian Jaynes would say–with a capacity to problem solve in two worlds.
Guide dog trainers know how to become six legged creatures, creatures with two minds and one purpose, which is surviving. But don’t kid yourself, this is a profession that takes years of preparation.
–from What a Dog Can Do: A Memoir of Life with Guide Dogs
by Stephen Kuusisto
forthcoming from Simon and Schuster
Planet of the Blind 
I look forward to reading this book!
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