FEELING THE SIGHTS : Camp Brings Nature Up Close and Personal for Blind Youngsters

“When I was young, I used to think clouds were like clamshells that carried water.”

Taunnie Howery, 15, cups her hands and gives a patient smile. She is trying to explain what it is like to grow up blind, to have no concept of color, to “see” with your hands and mind, to feel the splash of raindrops and imagine a sky full of little clamshells.

“It’s just pictures that form somehow. . . . Things become miniature. You try to keep them”--she spreads her arms like wings--”within your arm span.”

For Taunnie, summer means the feel of sunshine and a two-week sojourn to the Santa Monica Mountains for camping, swimming, horseback riding, athletics and dances. The sophomore-to-be at Simi Valley High School is back at the Foundation for the Junior Blind’s Camp Bloomfield for her 10th straight summer--not that she needs the lessons in independence. Tucked off Mulholland Drive about two miles from the coast, the summer camp draws hundreds of youths throughout Southern California whose vision ranges from the awful to the nonexistent.

But, Taunnie points out, it depends on what you mean by vision.

“I’ve never seen, I’ve never understood it, and I never will in all probability,” she says. “People say, ‘God, don’t you wish you could see what you’re missing?’ But they don’t understand. I’m not missing anything.”

Taunnie has been told that appearances can be deceiving and sometimes even talks as though her blindness is a blessing. If you lack sight, she says, you develop your insight--and beauty, she suggests, is in the heart of the beholder.

She grins as she tells about the doctors who told her parents, days after her birth, that their sightless baby was probably mentally retarded as well. (She sports a 3.8 grade-point average.)

And she grins about the airline attendant who last week offered to escort Taunnie through the airport by wheelchair. (She accepted his arm and walked.)

“They grow up with sight, so they take the insight for granted,” she says. “You can’t get angry because they don’t know.”

‘It’s Sad’

What bothers her more than the way sighted people dish out the pity is the way so many of her peers let themselves languish.

“It’s sad. It’s terribly sad,” she said. “Actually, it aggravates me.”

Not all campers are as self-assured as Taunnie. Some have to be persuaded to climb on horseback, but it helps that their instructor, Ken Elvington, is himself legally blind. Vincent Jones of Compton is more ambitious than most, hoping to make the high school basketball team despite his impaired vision. But there is also a boy who sits alone, talking to himself.

What looks like severe emotional problems may simply be rooted in low self-esteem, said Scott Duncan, the partially sighted head of the counseling staff. A poor self-image, Duncan says, is a primary reason the unemployment rate among legally blind adults is 70%.

The goal of the camp, Duncan says, is to show campers that their blindness need not keep them from leading full, active lives. Several staff members are among the Camp Bloomfield alumni.

“I’ve always been raised to believe I can do whatever I want to do,” Taunnie says. “A lot of parents feel guilty about the fact that their child is--quote, unquote-- handicapped. “ They make the mistake of coddling their children, she says.

‘I Don’t Want to See’

“I’m so used to what I’ve been living for 15 1/2 years, it’s second nature to me,” Taunnie says.

“People say, ‘Don’t you want to see?’ But I don’t want to see. I’d rather educate.”

Music is her medium. Within her arm span are the keys of a piano, and she has been writing songs, she says, since age 4. Her music tends to be “dance-type rock. . . . I’m not into heavy metal. And not rap. I hate rap.”

Her old songs were childish, silly things, she says. Now they come from the heart.

“Reach Out Your Heart” is about the homeless. “We’re Too Young to Die” is about gang warfare. “A Little Inconvenience” is about people like herself, a song she might sing at the camp talent show.

Ask her how it goes and she rattles off about 30 lines, the last three of which go like this:

We’re just as normal as,

We ain’t no different than,

We’re just as handicapped as you.