About five months ago I was asked to blog on a website in Australia. So, I downloaded a clock onto my home page which would tell me the time there and another gadget to let me see what the daily weather was like. At times I publish blogs I’ve used on my own site with minor adjustments. I thought it would be very interesting to write on the blog in another country but I realized there might be some different perspectives once in a while. There have not been any until my last blog entitled Patience and Persistence which reflected my harvesting a wild turkey the first since my disabling accident 11 years ago. Imagine my surprise when my latest post was introduced by the following two paragraphs written by the blog editor:
Hi everyone, welcoming you to another blog from Rich Fabend. Just a side note we in no way encourage the use of guns or promote hunting or anything of the sort. In Australia there are tight rules and restrictions and definite no-nos about the use of guns. I in fact love turkeys as I think they are very fascinating creatures. However I think that there is a great lesson and moral behind the words that Rich has presented in his blog posts here, and that is about patience and adapting to change.
… He lives in America and it is currently Hunting season there, thus causing the theme of his posts. But from his posts we can see that disability is a daily thing, however if we learn to live with it in our own way, it moves away from something hat runs our life to something that is part of our being.
When I first started writing about hunting I fully expected I would get responses from individuals who were uncomfortable with those actions. I also thought any issues would originate in the US and I believed these blogs would be well accepted in Australia. I have absolutely no problem with the comments that were written. Personally, I believe the United States should have stricter gun laws. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized my own misperception of Australia had been formed from watching movies like Crocodile Dundee, Australia, Quigley Down Under and the television exploits of Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter. Obviously, my concepts were inaccurate. I guess that’s the equivalent of people believing that New York State is one huge megalopolis resembling New York City.
While our views of other countries and cultures may be very limited, one thing is perfectly clear to me and that is that, as individuals with disabilities, we are a subculture of our own regardless of where we live in this world. We are brothers and sisters united by our struggle to deal with the profound challenges that confront us every day. I believe, in many ways, we have more in common with each other than we have with many of our able-bodied countrymen. When we communicate there is an unspoken acknowledgment of what our daily lives are like. We immediately understand what each of us is dealing with and feel no great need to explain it.
I orginally started my website www.handihelp.net so we could communicate with each other and more particularly share ideas, shortcuts and equipment that we have developed to reduce the frustrations we face daily. Why should an individual joining our subculture not be able to have ready access to the things that have already been developed which would improve their quality of life? I am speaking here primarily of equipment but I also feel strongly that we should share the mental processes, attitudes and beliefs that have allowed us to adjust to situations that life has chosen to place us in.
So first I should apologize to the people of Australia for the foolish beliefs I had about their country. More importantly, I think we of the world’s disabled community should make greater efforts to share our thoughts and information which will enable us to live more stress-free lives.
I have waited for this moment for a long time. May 26, 2010 – 9:15 AM. Today I harvested my first turkey in 11 years. I had been an avid hunter prior to my disability. I believed I would never be able to hunt again, especially by myself. Today’s success was the result of the labors of many people: my wife, who walked me out and help me set up, my nurse Rhonda, who came at 6 AM the mornings in May so I would have more time to hunt, my neighbor Mike, who allows me to hunt his land, my friend John, who gave me his time to set up blinds made out of snow fence and camouflage material, and so it goes. My wife likes to say “It takes a village”.
The blind
I am also proud of myself. Over the 11 years, I got discouraged; turkeys often were close enough to harvest but something always went wrong. In the beginning it was my inability to camouflage my wheelchair well enough, then my finger couldn’t pull the trigger, or I had a muscle spasm which alerted the turkeys to my presence and were instantly gone. But I persisted and attempted to correct the challenges as they presented themselves. But at the end of each spring I had the same results — NOTHING. Often it was a process of trial and error, but gradually my efforts began to improve my chances. I created a trigger adapter which allows me to fire the shotgun using my mouth. Not only does this solve the problem of trying to find the trigger, but it also allows me to use both hands to steady the gun. At many points along the way it would’ve been easy to give up and quit. I know from experience it’s a lot easier to give advice to others than it is to take it myself. So get discouraged, get frustrated, but don’t give up.
The trigger adapter I made
One of the things I like the most about hunting is that it is totally irrelevant to the game that I am an individual with a disability. To the turkeys I hunt, I am just another predator and that’s all I ask for. Today was definitely a day worth waiting for.
The turkey on my lap. Notice the turkey call I adapted to sit on my thigh so I could use it one handed
Going..
When I woke up this morning at a quarter of six the temperature outside was 27°. Even though it is May 10th you have to expect the possibility of this kind of temperature when you live in northern New York. My nurse arrived around six and the day began. I was ready to roll a little after eight o’clock but was delayed because of a problem my nurse had loading my shotgun. Bundled up in camouflage, my wife and I finally headed out of the house. I’m fortunate to be able to hunt across the street on a large area of abandoned farm land. I motored down the driveway, across a field, down an abandoned road and drove into the field to the place where I was going to hunt. At the edge of the field I back into an area of small trees and brush. One must blend in with the surroundings because turkeys have excellent vision and can spot anything out of place. Marge helped me with some final adjustments, covered my head with camouflage netting and left. Fifteen or twenty minutes after she left intermittently I began calling the turkeys. Turkeys call back and forth to locate each other during the mating season. Although it was cold with a brisk wind, it was a beautiful sun shiny day. Back in the hedgerow there was little wind and it wasn’t long before I could feel the warm rays of sun on my face.
going...
After a while I became aware of a bird jumping around from branch to branch. A minute or two later it landed on my shotgun barrel and stayed for about 30 seconds. It was Black-capped Chickadee. They are cute and entertaining little birds. I glanced at its feet gripping the barrel of the shotgun. How can anything be so delicate? Even though we can have brutal winters, Chickadees are year-round residents. After it flew off I called a couple more times. Slowly my eyes began to close and I nodded off in the warm sunshine. When I awoke again the grass in the field was bending in the wind, as were the trees and bushes directly across from me, every shade of green rocking in the wind. I heard the raucous call of a crow. It kept repeating and each time after it was done I listened intensely for a gobble that never came. Often in the early spring during the mating season male turkeys will gobble when crows are calling. Again I became aware of movement in the bushes around me. This time it was a pair of Wood Thrushes who were also involved with the spring mating ritual. They have one of the most beautiful calls of the early spring morning but these two had other things on their mind.
gone
Sitting in the warm sunshine calling, nodding and watching, the morning passed quickly. I soon heard my wife’s voice as she arrived to walk me home. The hunting time ends at noon each day and Marge insists on walking me back home. Tomorrow is another day. Oh, by the way, I didn’t see or hear any turkeys, but it was only noon and I had already had a quality day. At one point during my recovery I never thought I would enjoy a day like this again.
Years ago, shortly after my injury, I saw an episode of NYPD Blue where the police were questioning a former drug dealer who was confined to a wheelchair as the result of a drive-by shooting. They were threatening to put him in jail and he told the officers you can lock up my body but you can’t imprison my mind. I realized the relevancy of that statement to my situation. If we choose to accept that premise, then we empower ourselves to use the freedom that exists in our minds. I was involved in the martial arts for a number of years prior to my injury. The Grandmaster of the association used to say Karate was 90% mental and only 10% physical. There was a great deal of emphasis on the mind-body connection. It seems for some reason Western Civilization separates the mental and physical aspects of an individual. Eastern Cultures seem much more aware of the total being and much more inclined to deal with a person in a holistic way.
More professionals in this country are beginning to utilize Eastern techniques such as meditation, acupuncture and yoga in a holistic approach to better heath. Many Olympic caliber athletes are including imaging, also know as visualization, as part of their training. Thomas W. Morris, a motivational coach and president of Washington, D.C. based Morris Associates (www.morrisdc.com) writes in FOCUS “Visualize success. Want to achieve a certain goal? Take time to visualize yourself reaching that goal.” Why would we believe only athletes can benefit from these techniques?
Brian Mac is a Level 4 Performance Coach and Coach Tutor/Assessor with UK Athletics, the United Kingdom’s National Governing body for Track and Field Athletics. Brian writes on his website “They (the participants) should see themselves enjoying the activity and feeling satisfied with their performance. They should attempt to enter fully into the image with all their senses. Sight, hear, feel, touch, smell and perform, as they would like to perform in real life.” www.brianmac.co.uk/
You can use your mind to help you enjoy yourself. Oden Black’s latest steamy Blog on ThisAbled.com is a perfect example of this idea. If there are activities that you once enjoyed that you are unable to participate in now, try revisiting them again with mental imaging. While this may seem a little offbeat in the beginning, remember practice makes perfect. You can use your mind to free yourself of the constraints placed on you by your disability. To change a very common phrase just a little bit, “Your mind will set you free”. One imaging activity I enjoy is to put on my poncho and sit outside in the rain with my eyes closed. The sound of the raindrops on the nylon almost immediately takes me back to my wilderness trips when the rain would confine me to my tent or to waking in the middle of the night to the sound of the rain on my tent. Nestled in a warm sleeping bag, or in this case my poncho, listening to the rain brings on a feeling of serenity and that all is right in the world. I am treated to a “memory flood” of some of the best times of my life.
Letting the rain take me away
A rainy day on Grass Pond in 1989
Disability, Education, Hunting, Living with a Disability, Observation, sensitivity | Rich Fabend | 
June 2, 2010 1:32 pm | 
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