Imagine losing your eyesight in the span of one week and having to adjust: To put your clothes on in the morning, navigate the streets you crossed everyday and cook dinner for yourself -- everything you once took for granted is now a major challenge that you do in the dark.
"I look at life differently. I could have lost my motor skills. Could have died. I could have lost my memory. It could have been a lot worse," says Dan Peters. Peters, 25, of Chicago was in the Navy when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor nearly two years ago. The cancer damaged his optic nerve, which left him completely blind less than a week after his operation.
"Life's a lot more precious," he says. "I try to do things that I never otherwise probably would have done. Some things like this - I thought about it before, but I never thought I'd actually do it."
What Peters is doing is taking aim at a target on the archery course at Camp Caribou in Winslow, where 19 military veterans with physical disabiities have been invited for the weekend. Sponsored by Maine Handicapped Sking, the Veterans No Boundaries Program offers people a chance to try a whole range of activities in a supportive environment.
Peters' guide is fellow miltary veteran Mark Moody, who is literally helping him see what he is doing. And Moody has a knack for this instruction. As Dan hits the target, other program participants cheer him on.
"When I heard it hit I was -- I got a rush of adrenalin there. I don't know. I wanted to go tackle something," Peters laughs.
Tackling things is exactly the way Dan Peters has decided to approach his new life. For medical reasons, he's been forced to retire from the Navy, give up his career as a builder -- at least for the moment -- and enroll in mobility classes through a Veterans Administration Hospital to learn to live independently.
But rather than let his circumstances get him down, Peters has decided he wants to learn to scuba dive, go skiing this winter and try Camp Caribou's zipline -- where we found Maureen Hawkins of Boston making a terrified inaugural run from a 30-something foot treetop down a cable into the lake. Onlookers cheer as she slides safely down.
It turns out the No Boundaries program is just as rewarding for relatives and friends as for the veterans themselves. Hawkins is an aide to a wheelchair-bound veteran and she says she needed to show him she could conquer her fears. "I wouldn't have heard it on the whole five hour ride home: Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you do it? You know I'd do it if I could."
Susan Sharon: "You were really scared, weren't you?"
Maureen Hawkins: "Oh yeah! It was just the whole fear of letting go."
In addition to the zipline and the archery range, veterans and their companions are given lessons in fly fishing, kayaking, climbing and martial arts. Volunteers help with training. And all the specialized equipment and the activities are free, paid for through private donations.
Ted Moorman, his wife Susan and their nine-year-old daughter are also here from Illinois. Moorman was an Air Force pilot who was on his way to Kuwait three years ago when he was in a military cargo plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Dover.
"I really feel that one of the biggest hardships is our daughter. The fact that she sees a lot of the other dads doing stuff that is hard for me to do," he says.
Moorman suffered a spinal cord injury in the crash. Originally, doctors thought he might never walk again. Moorman is walking, but at the age of 51 he's also been forced to give up his career as a pilot. And he says that sometimes gets him down.
But like Dan Peters, Moorman says he's discovered that he is capable of doing more than he thought. Last winter he got on a pair of skis for the first time since his accident.
Ted Moorman: "I never thought I'd see a pair of skis or a ski slope again."
Susan Moorman: "He actually skis better than he walks."
Moorman says the best part is it's something he can do with his daughter. And that, says fellow veteran Dan Peters, is the real trick to adjusting to life with a disability: finding new ways to enjoy yourself. He says it helps when you bump into other people out there who are also making these same discoveries.