Ben Underwood is blind. Both eyes were removed when he was three, leaving him with no vision. no vision at all. So how on earth does Ben do this?
And this? And even this? I don't across somebody like Ben. You know, he is quite unique. Ben lost his eyes to cancer, but unbelievably, he's taught himself to see with sound.
If he chooses to go out there and ride that bicycle, let him ride the bicycle. It's got to be very smart. Somewhere in there, it's a little genius going on.
I don't consider myself boring. Ain't nothing wrong with me. I'm just a little bit of a nerd. Ben Underwood and his family live in Sacramento, the state capital of California.
It's an old city with roots in the Wild West, but Ben and his family live in the new outlying suburbs. Ben uses many common aids for the blind like speaking software for the computer so he can jot down his rap lyrics. He's also written a book and does schoolwork on a high-tech Braille writer. But what's unusual, what's truly unique, is what he doesn't use.
Ben has no guide dog and never uses a white cane. He's not even using his hands. Instead, he sees with sound. He makes a sharp click which bounces back off nearby objects.
Amazingly, Ben's ears pick up the echoes and he can precisely locate where things are. Ben is the only person in the world who sees using nothing but echolocation. Well, I've been able to tell where walls are and where things on the ground are. If I click down, then I can hear them easier.
But if I'm walking, I'm just clicking over it, it's not going to get it. And I can tell. where desks are in the classroom and stuff like that.
I can hear the wall over there, the couch over there. I can hear the wall behind me. I can hear the wall over there and the TV and the computer. Ben, I need a towel for drying because I don't have all my kitchen towels in here. All right, Mom, I'm going to go get it.
Ben's echolocation is so good that at home his mom, Aquanetta, Uncle Kerry, and brother Isaiah make no allowances for his blindness at all. When I was a little kid, I didn't really know he was blind. I just knew he was my brother. Did he make it?
Yep. He's determined to do what he's gonna do. And he refuses for somebody to label him as blind. You see this kid that has a whole different way of thinking. It's magic and it's real.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone quite as remarkable as Ben, nor have I seen anyone quite as remarkable as Ben's mom. And I think that's a lot of the secret to Ben's amazing talents. He knows that there's nothing impossible for him.
You know, and it's not. Whatever he wants to do. You know, I tell him he can see.
Aquanetta has refused to allow the loss of Ben's eyes to overshadow their lives. Ben was born perfectly healthy with dark eyes like his mum. But when he was two, she looked into his eyes and saw something was terribly wrong.
In his pupil, it looked like a marble or, you know, when you shine a light at night on a cat's eye, and you know how that looks like a marble or like a light or fluorescent. And that's what it looked like. And within three days, it turned white. In Ben's eye was a rapidly growing malignant tumor, retinoblastoma.
It's a rare infant eye cancer that affects only six children per million. If left to its own devices, it would be lethal. It would kill him. The disease would spread locally and he would never be able to survive. If Ben wasn't treated, it would quickly spread along the optic nerve and into his brain.
If it's not caught very early, often the treatment is to have to actually remove the eye in order to save the body from having it spread. And Ben, of course, had very aggressive treatment. In an attempt to save his sight, doctors immediately began intense chemo and radiotherapy.
But after ten months, there was still some scattered tumor. Aquanetta had to make a critical, heart-rending decision. I had a choice. I either could remove his eyes or try to keep on with more chemo and radiation to keep the vision.
But the thing about it is that if you continue to try and when the cancer, if the cancer got down the optic nerve, they wouldn't live. So you have to make a choice. And my choice was, you know, to remove his eyes. From the first dark moments, Aquanetta was determined that little Ben wouldn't think of himself as blind.
When he woke up from the surgery and he said, Mom, I can't see anymore, I can't see anymore. And I told him, I said, Baby, yes, you can see. I said, You can see with your hands. And I put his little hands on my face. I said, See me?
And I said, You can see me with your nose. And I put my hand to his nose and I said, You smell me? He said, You can see me with your ears. I said, You hear me? I said, Baby, you can't use your eyes anymore, but you still have your hands and your nose and your ears.
I said, Baby, you can still see. I said, Baby, you can still see. To this day, Aquanetta describes the world so Ben can experience life to the full. Mom, where are you standing right now? I'm right over here.
Whoa, snap. Where are you standing? Do you just see miles and miles of water? Yes, Ben. I mean, as far as my eyes can see, looking out, now I do see some mountains out there and I see clouds, but all I can see is water.
Instead of the land, it's just water. And from here, it looks like a deep blue. This looks like a picture.
Beautiful. Ever since the loss of her son's sight, Aquanet has known instinctively that she would have to be strong for them. One of the things I realized to do is to never let him see me be afraid, never let him see me cry. I go in my room and I cry and go through what I need to go through and come out here and never know.
Never let him know that I was... feeling sorry for him because I didn't want him to ever feel sorry for himself. Just keep giving him confidence, courage, strength, and that's all I've ever done. Aquanetta was stunned when just a year after the operation to remove his eyes, her little boy began to see again with sound. Ben Underwood is on his fourth set of prosthetic eyes.
His mum, Aquanetta, still treasures the ones he had as a little boy. I had him in a safe place and I can't find his eyes. I lost my baby's eyes when I died.
Since he lost his own eyes to retinal cancer, Ben's had several pairs, each increasing in size. They ensure his eye socket... grow normally. Okay, here they are.
Here's one set. Oh, these might be the first set. His first eyes. These are my favorites. And then they were the first, and they look so real and so natural.
It's very important to me that he looks as normal as he possibly can look, because I want him to be as normal as he possibly can be. Ben's eyes look natural, but they'll never help him see. I'm not sure if he's going to be able to see.
Just one year after the operation to remove his eyes, Ben astonished his mum when he performed what seemed like a miracle. He was in the backseat in his car seat and we're driving down the street. He said, Mom, you see that big building out there? And I said, I see the big building out there.
Do you see that big building out there? You know, it just kind of tripped me out. I'm like, you know, I can see this.
I know this boy can't see. We see an object like a building because light is reflected from the surface into our eyes. sound behaves in a similar way little Ben's ears were picking up the noise of city traffic bouncing back from the big building that he was passing driven along in the car then heard that the side streets sounded different from the buildings he found he could form a picture of them with sound Seeing with sound transformed Ben's life.
His mum let him play in the street because his sound pictures seemed to make him more aware of danger than his sighted friends. I would watch and see what he did and I noticed that, you know, cars would pass by and as soon as that car would hit the curve, he'd move out of the way. I thought, wow, you know what, he hears those cars, you know, for blocks away.
So he knows before the other kids know to move because I just recognized that, you know, he was paying more attention. Ben's super sense amazed everyone. But this was just the beginning.
When he was seven, Ben discovered a new power. He began to click. For a couple of years, it was just a habit.
And then next thing you know, it was making things more distinguished for me. I was able to navigate easier and know what things are. Ben learned to bounce his clicks off objects around him, giving him an even clearer picture of his surroundings.
When he was very young, I used to always tell him, Ben, make your sound, even when you're running. playing don't forget to make your sound that's his survival technique over the years Ben has developed his clicking into such a fine art that he can skate freely he has the confidence and fluidity of movement through space other blind people can only dream of Ben can see this gap in the parked cars, turn into it, and go through without touching the sides, then smoothly turn again along the pavement. He's entirely self-taught. Looking at these skills that he's developed with his own mind, I mean, that's got to be really amazing.
Somewhere in there, it's a little genius going on. Ben's super sense has extended his horizons. Clicking has set him free to live life to the full.
There's nothing his friends do that Ben won't attempt and conquer. Oh yeah, that's the same. Get beat by a blind man in a video game. Everyone who meets Ben just can't believe their eyes.
I'm going to guess what you had for lunch, okay? Dr. James Rubin, Ben's eye doctor, has treated many blind children, but Ben was way outside even his experience. One day I came into the exam room and there was a boy feverishly playing his Game Boy. He's looking at me like, chirping out, like, is he really playing this? I looked at him and I looked at the chart and I said, this can't be the same boy that had lost both his eyes when he was a child.
It just can't be possible. And I said, oh yeah, yeah, he's blind. He said, well, how is he playing the video game?
From that point on, I was just flabbergasted. Ah! Dr. Rubin was so astonished, he told the local press.
Soon, Ben would swim with dolphins for a photo featuring People magazine. Yeah! I want to like that!
Then TV news features launched him onto the Oprah Winfrey show. Like Ben, dolphins echolocate with clicks. They also have highly evolved hearing. The question is, have Ben's ears become super sensitive to compensate for the loss of his eyes? Pie.
Pie. He. He.
Smooth. Smooth. Book. Book. Ben is having a hearing test.
Does he have the hearing of a dolphin or bat? Picking up frequencies above or below the normal human threshold. Normal hearing is from 25 decibel and above. And as you can see, Ben has normal hearing in both his... right and his left ear.
Ben's ears are not super sensitive. So how does he get so much information from them? Can Ben have trained his brain to translate the sound he hears into visual information?
Some of the best listeners in the world are to be found in San Diego in Southern California. At the U.S. Navy submarine base, sonar operators learn their craft.
Now, snapping shrimp? Snapping shrimp sounds like bacon frying in a frying pan. Whales sound like whale sound. And you have boing fish, they sound like boing.
On the surface, a submarine has many ways to see where it is. Radio, radar, GPS and sight. Once submerged, these are all useless. The captain and the crew are blind, but they can still hear.
Like Ben, a submarine crew sees with sound, using sonar. Sonar is an acronym that stands for sound navigation and ranging. It's basically the art and the science of using sound to interpret how an object moves and how far the object is away from you. When an enemy submarine is trying to hide, it goes into stealth mode, silent running. Making no noise, it is invisible to a pursuing sub.
To locate it, the hunting crew must throw out a sound and listen for where the echo comes from. Just like Ben when he clicks, they are actively searching out an object with a sound. When it bounces off a metallic object, it does make a sound like a bell ringing. So you'll hear the ping going out and a ping coming back towards you.
And once you hear that sound, you know that there is an object out there that you need to investigate further. Sonar operators undergo extensive training to interpret the echoes, to discern distance, direction, size and shape. Remarkably, Ben has trained his brain to do the same, without the help of a submarine's multi-million dollar technology.
In water, even a small noise can be heard for many miles. In air, echoes are much harder to pick up. They're so faint, it's a miracle Ben can echolocate at all.
South of Sacramento between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean is the University of California, Santa Barbara. Scientists here want to study how Ben sees and navigates with such a faint signal. Nicholas!
This is Ben. Nice to meet you. Psychologist Dr. Nicholas Giudice has been blind from birth. And geographer Dr. Jim Marston is partially sighted.
Professor of psychology Jack Loomis is the odd man out. He can see. Their research combines psychology and geography to help develop practical mobility aids for the visually impaired.
They've invited many blind people to help them over the years, but never anyone who echolocates like Ben. One really impressed me was when he walked along that curved path. He wasn't always right in the center, but he did extraordinarily well. And we didn't even tell him to try to stay in the center. We just told him to walk.
We didn't know that it was a curve. Right. He did exactly perfectly.
Dr. DiGiucci wants to find out whether he can locate a tree by clicking. Somebody find one. Do a click.
Is that too high? I'm trying to find it all. Is that a white click, Ben?
No. My clicking is definitely the click of an amateur. I haven't ever done echo locations, so you can hear my clicks and Ben's clicks. They're really quite different.
Ben's lab, mine are kind of a much less of a full spectrum click. In the Human Behaviour Lab, the tests begin. Exactly how clearly can Ben see with echolocation?
First the team ask him to measure some simple objects. Can you tell us how big it is without touching it? About this high. Next the researchers investigate whether the faint echoes are enough to build a clear mental picture. Which two objects are the same?
Seeing with light, it's easy. But the tests are proving it's not so straightforward to see with sound. I don't know, this one?
Yeah. Alright, good. What's this?
You are terrific. Yeah, that's great. That's a good job. Can Ben go one step further and identify the next thing he finds? What's that?
You're pointing to it, right? Yeah. Do you know what it is? No, I don't know.
I know I smell something. Just like submarine sonar, Ben's clicks can detect an object but not see what it is out of context. The team press on, pushing Ben to the outer limits of his ability.
The rod is a very small target to find, and it's also curved. The curved surface of the rod scatters the click. There is hardly any echo returning to Ben's ears.
The audio signal is very weak. Can Ben see it at all? It is little.
Just take your best guess as to where you think it is. Just point at it. Is there someone over here?
Uh huh, touch it. That's the only way to talk. That is very, very little.
We didn't know how big an object you could sense or how small an object. I sensed it. I heard you.
I just didn't know what... But that's the biggest we were going to try, and they were going to try some really small ones, and this was pretty much at the limit. The researchers are very surprised.
If the echoes really are that tiny, Ben's skill is phenomenal. The lab tests were tough, but real life is about to begin. about to hit Ben with the biggest challenge yet moving house.
I can't has uprooted the whole family for them. She plans a normal independent life for her son and a 14. The time to start learning is now. One of the main reasons for moving is so that he can walk to school and to karate so on both sides of us he's got school and karate, he's got the grocery store, he has access to everything that he basically needs when I'm at work or I'm not around so he can, you know, have his independence.
We got the smallest backyard ever. I definitely want him to go away to college. I want him to leave home like everybody else. I want him to be able to take care of himself like everyone else. When I get older, I want to be an inventor, actor, writer, and a game designer.
There's no limit to Ben's ambition, but despite Despite his amazing talent, he'll have to work hard on improving his mobility skills to realize his dreams. It's not going to be a big deal for me to hang out and to do what I got to do and be on my own, you know, although I am blind. It ain't going to be no big deal at all.
Where's my black shoes? Where they at? You said you put them in the car.
To a 14-year-old, everything is possible. But life as an independent blind man is not. adult may not be as easy as he thinks.
Ben has a lot to learn. What's up? Oh!
Much more than he realizes. You know, we can handicap those kids by overprotecting because of our love or our fear. Our fear that they may get hurt. Today, Ben's family are moving house to give him even more independence.
From his new home, he'll be able to walk to school by himself. But school hasn't always been a happy experience for Ben. Three years ago, his mum was advised to send him to a residential school for the blind. She was told it would be good for Ben to mix with other blind kids for one year before high school.
As soon as he arrived, he knew it was a big mistake. For some reason I thought that all parents were like me or did what I did or you know and that all blind kids were like Ben. I didn't like the blind school because it's like a school full of handicapped kids I don't belong here ain't nothing wrong with me.
He went to the school and realized or found out that they're not like him. Many of the students it turned out had multiple disabilities. ...abilities. With so many vulnerable students around, staff were naturally protective.
But Ben wanted to run around and play games, just as he did at home. So he wanted to take his ball to school so they can do some things, and they told him, no Ben, you can't bring that here, somebody may... It was so boring. I was literally trying to show them the outside life of playing games in the outside world, because they're basically just in a little box.
They've got full eye watch every second, every moment. Some staff had concerns about Ben's reliance on echolocation alone and encouraged him to use a white cane. Everybody else used a little stick.
So when they was walking, you know, they'd be like... And every time I'd be walking, I'd just walk. Ben felt the white cane represented everything he hated about being seen as blind.
Now he's at the local high school, Ben likes to blend in as much as he can. People don't really realize I'm blind when they first see me. Because, you know, I look normal and I act normal.
I'm like a normal kid. But if they don't know I'm blind, and then they find out, they begin to act like I need help all the time and stuff like that. Like, I don't really need it, but I be telling them, like, off me, dang.
I don't need your help, but move. OK. The house move means Ben and Aquanetta must map a new route to the high school.
So there's a bench right here, Ben. Can you hear the bench? He needs to listen carefully.
Yes, I hear the bench. On Monday morning, he'll be going on his own. Yes, I hear whatever that is.
That's another bench. So then you know you're in your right path. To keep him out of danger, Aquanetta's found a pedestrian path away from traffic. Ben would prefer... prefer a shorter route through the streets, but it crosses a major road.
Why can't we go the other way? That's longer. No, it's not. Yes, it is.
No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, it's not.
Yes, it is. Okay, I need you to pay attention to where we're at. I know where we are.
Even Aquanetta's safer route can't avoid cars entirely. In the mornings, Ben does not realize that traffic, everybody's going to work, taking their kids to school, that traffic is crazy. Absolutely, yeah. Crossing any road is potentially dangerous.
U.S. law says traffic must stop for a person holding a white cane. Ben refuses to use one. I said, but what you can do, you can take your cane, just take it with you. You don't have to hold it and open it when you get there. And I said, Ben, all the cars will stop.
He said, mom, where did that come from? The cane is a handicap device. You don't consider yourself handicapped? No, I do not consider myself handicapped at all. It's Monday, and Ben must walk to school alone for the first time.
Aquanetta has shown him the route, but he wasn't paying attention. Ben's confident body language is gone. This morning he looks tentative and unsure.
He looks lost. I don't even know if it's that way or this way. Y'all gonna come down and sleep around here. Ben has given up and goes back to the house.
Come on, come on, come on. Y'all making me head to mouth. Get in the car.
Come on, I'm over here. Come on! Come on, Ben.
I'm gonna drop you off. Let's go. I gotta go to work. Go to work. And what you gonna do?
He's pissed off. That's just what, that's what he, excuse my French. He's 14 years old and he has an attitude, but...
What can I say? We need to walk that path a few times. Can you just walk it a few times? Okay, why don't you walk in there?
I'll walk. Come on. Yeah, take me to the... Alright, I'll walk. Aquanetta goes off to work, leaving Uncle...
Kerry to help Ben walk to school. You can do anything you set your mind to. I ain't set my mind to that, so leave me alone about all that.
OK, nobody's bothering you about it, but it's got to be done regardless. Ben has had to hitch a ride with his uncle. By refusing to use a cane and label himself as blind, it seems Ben has made himself more dependent on others, not less.
More blind than he might otherwise be. Ben's a very wise kid, as a kid, but see, he thinks he knows too much. much and he's got to realize that you don't know everything buddy i don't even know everything and i've been here for a long time and i just got a lot to learn he's got to go through a lot now he's got to get prepared for college aquanetta knows that if ben is to reach his full potential she needs expert help for him someone who understands his world there's perhaps only one person ben might listen to We have fence, we have bushes. Dan Kish is a unique mobility instructor. Like Ben, he lost his eyes to cancer as a baby.
He also discovered clicking as a child. Unlike Ben, he's perfected a mobility system that combines echolocation with a cane. He has Ben's no-limits philosophy too, taking students hiking and mountain biking.
For Dan Kish, the blind leading the blind is a campaigning vision. Aquanetta is dropping Ben into his worst nightmare. Waiting at Dan Kish's house is a room full of blind people with canes.
Oh, hi. It's very nice to meet you too. So, Mr. Kish, what do you do? You keep your canes as a souvenir? You know, I don't know how.
Oh, man. Oh, my gosh. It's a room full of blind guys.
I see. Do you guys mind if I ask, were you born blind? No, I became blind at the age of 14. At the age of 14? Yeah, yeah. Basically over four months, went from like 20-20 vision to nothing.
Akonet is making the effort to get to know Dan and his team, but Ben has decided to opt out. And so I try to help students develop the ability to be able to pretty much tackle. tackle any situation.
I want him to experience the world the best that he can and to see the best that he can and whatever it takes to see. I'm not going to test you. I'm not going to... I will stretch you, okay, just because I think that you're ready for some pretty advanced stuff. When I hike, for example, I'm using a cane in one hand and I'm using a hiking stick in the other, which is actually something...
Why are you laughing? I'm using a cane in one hand. and I hugged him and he's taking a nap.
Oh, yeah. As teenagers, Hector, Brian and Juan were all trained by Dan. Now it's Ben's turn. It's their job to make it fun.
Here we are today taking a little echolocation. We are today about to echolocate. Carp. Tree.
Just to let you know. Over the next two days, Dan and his team will be offering the benefit of their experience to Ben. Dan will show Ben how he stays out of danger in traffic, negotiates unfamiliar places, even a rocky mountain trail. First, Dan must appraise just how advanced Ben really is. It's like bushes and stuff.
It's what you think. A wall. It's a wall.
a pole, a tree. I like the way you focus, Ben. A lot of times when I'm working with a student, I'll say, look at this, and they'll say, look at what?
And you tend to be more like, oh, that? Now, what's very impressive here is that in terms of strictly the use of echolocation, he's probably one of the finest, if not the finest, that I've ever come across. Ben is the best self-taught echolocator in the world.
Everything he's ever been told about that is true. and that's a problem. I'm a proud of this, Dan. It's gonna be impossible for me to be one of your students, man. Anyone who says, I have nothing to learn, has severely limited themselves in terms of opportunities for doing more and being more and becoming more.
Dan meets Ben's challenge head on. He takes him straight out of his comfort zone onto a busy main road. I'm gonna let you know now, I don't play with cars, so I ain't walking in the middle of this shit.
The gulf between Ben's lack of confidence with cars and Dan's faith in his white cane nearly gets Dan won over. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay, yeah, go ahead.
Oh, good grief. Oh my gosh. Goodness gracious, y'all. Dan has experience of traveling quickly and safely all over the world alone.
Alone. Just the sort of... ...dependency was to teach Ben. He is a wannabe good traveler.
He is literally functioning at about......half or less of what I would say his capacity would be or should be. Dan chose this street because it is particularly challenging for blind travelers. If you are blind, real danger is only a footstep away. I knew I was going to hit that.
I knew it. I knew it. It happens to me every time. No one is surprised. This sort of thing happens a lot.
Dan's first class echolocation skills fail him. Even the cane cannot save him. And some encounters are potentially fatal.
To a blind person without a cane, this is a death trap. A click cannot bounce back from a hole. So to Ben, who relies solely on echolocation, it's invisible. I ain't gonna touch it, I ain't gonna touch it, I ain't gonna touch it.
Okay, okay, okay, I just... Dan wants to show Ben that echolocation has a fatal flaw. Ben cannot see the danger. Anyhow, as you know, my hands are right here.
My hands are right here. I don't know, it doesn't matter. Something you could step over, like a, I don't know, could be like a curb, train track.
Okay, something you could just sort of step over. Yeah. Okay. I would say that the best locator in the world would have no better than a 10% chance of detecting this if they didn't know it was already here. Take a look.
Oh Jesus, what's down there? Exactly. I mean, you only have to be killed once.
Oh, it's just a hole. It's just a hole. Let me see. Ben seems unwilling to accept Dan's lesson that echolocation alone won't protect him from this potential death trap. When they move on to the next task, their relationship hits rock bottom, when Ben gets lost.
How do I get out of here? Well, this is not a lesson to me. Dan wants Ben to build a mental map of the park. Ben needs to know exactly where he is in a strange place.
It's a daily challenge for a blind person travelling on their own. It takes strategic thought and self-discipline. But that's no fun, and Ben is skiving. After the game, Dan asks Ben to walk back to the park entrance. Ben sets off, in completely the wrong direction.
You want to head back? Yeah. The lights. Yeah.
Oh, no kidding. Distracted by the basketball, he's forgotten the mental map he was supposed to be building, and he's lost. Ben is far less self-sufficient than he could be.
Well, I'm following the sound of the cars over there, so... Okay. What do you think is over there? I don't know. I hear music and cars.
Oh, Jesus. This is getting seriously annoying. Ben has now left the park. Lost and creeping around in the road, he's playing a dangerous game. He's hiding from Dan.
In stealth mode, refusing to click and give away his position. Dan is hunting for him. This is a real game of blind man's buff. With cars.
I lost him. It's getting dark. Not that Dan or Ben care, but they've been out here too long.
Dan finds Ben and uses his mental map to take him straight back to the start, where Ben's mum is waiting. Accustomed to winning admiration for his amazing echolocation, Ben hates to fail. Dan understands more than anyone. My heart aches for where he is, trying to kind of fit himself into a world which sends a lot of mixed messages about your blindness and about how you fit in or don't fit in, what does the cane mean and, you know. So I struggled with all of those things and my heart aches for where he is.
A fun training exercise has turned into a battle of wills. Dan still plans a hike in the mountains tomorrow. And he'll need his two trusty sticks. It's one last chance for Ben to free himself from his hatred of the white cane.
There was a great big moon. There was a great big moon. He liked to drink a lot of juice.
He liked to drink a lot of juice. Singing oh way. Singing oh way oh.
Way oh way oh way oh way oh. Way oh way oh way oh way oh. Way oh way oh. Ben's limited experience of blind people tells him that they are sedentary and isolated. This trip has blown that person's mind.
prejudice apart. When I met Dan Kish's friends, I thought there was going to be guys who were boring, sit around, act like blind people and whatnot. But yeah, I was cruelly mistaken.
So here's the joke then yeah, there's a line of tomatoes Uh-huh, you know the big one is in the front the little baby ones in the back shut up Goes to the little one in the back and jumps on says ketchup What are we walking through a Cannon a little mini the cane is essential here for safety close to these cliffs and rocks Then he's taking his first steps towards accepting that the cane might make him more independent what we have seen is glimpses of been spontaneously coming to use a cane as a tool and nothing more nor less and start to detach some of that emotional baggage from its use and from having one and from how it labels you and so forth because it's all true Even with the hunk, I mean, it was like, okay, man, I see you got that stick with you now, huh? What was y'all playing? All kind of hoes in this wood. And, you know, he's laughing.
Oh, yeah, I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna have the cane doing this. Uh-huh.
My cane keep falling in hoes. So I honestly believe in no... I know in my heart that Ben, you know, when that time comes, he'll do what he needs to do. I'd like to think there's been another seed planted here, even if Ben decides never to take a hike in his life. again, there may be something that germinates from this experience.
Woo! I done put my foot dead in some water. There go a rock right there. Right there go a rock.
I'm gonna sit on top of this big old rock. That's what it's there for I think. It has your name on it.
It says Bend. I'm cut. I'm cut.
Ah! Ah! Natalie Pinkham's on a heart-wrenching journey to find the lost orphan tonight.
We join her on her quest to discover Morella's story, brand new at 10. Up next, Home and Away.