"Touching the Rock"

Excerpt from Touching the Rock - An Experience of Blindness by John Hull "For me, the wind has taken the place of the sun, and a nice day is a day when there is a mild breeze. This brings into life all the sound in my environment... A day on which it was merely warm would, I suppose, be a quite nice day but thunder makes it more exciting, because it suddenly gives a sense of space and distance. Thunder puts a roof over my head, a very high, vaulted ceiling of tumbling sound. I realize that I am in a big place, whereas before there was nothing there at all. The sighted person always have a roof overhead, in the form of a blue sky or the clouds, or the stars at night. The same is true for a blind person of the sound of the wind in the trees. It creates trees; one is surrounded by trees whereas before there was nothing."