A beautiful, silent world: Experiencing the outdoors with sensory deprivation

At National Trails UK, we want our National Trails to be places where everyone feels able to connect with the landscape. Conversations about access often focus on physical features like stiles, surfaces and gradients, and these matter hugely. But access is about more than infrastructure alone. People experience the outdoors in very different ways, and not all barriers are visible.

In this guest blog, Laura Perratt, a fundraising consultant at Prospect and Pitch, shares her reflections from her own experience of living with a hidden disability. Through her personal story, Laura invites us to think more broadly about what accessibility really means and how sensory and psychological differences shape our experience of the natural world.

A personal perspective on access

When we think of equitable access to outdoor spaces, we often picture miles without stiles, wide even surfaces and step-free routes. These are, of course, very important features to include when planning accessible adventures – but we can’t stop there. Truly equitable access considers more than just differing mobility needs. There are hundreds of factors which impact a person’s ability to enjoy our incredible landscapes. When it comes to differing abilities specifically, we need to give special attention to psychological and sensory diversity as well as physical diversity – particularly when this involves unseen disability.

I’d like to share some reflections from my own experience of being an outdoor enthusiast and adventurer living with a hidden disability.

How we experience the outdoors

First, I’d like to ask you a question. When you step outside on a beautiful spring day, what do you notice? Depending on where you are, you might see the vibrant colours of buttery daffodils, pastel bluebells, luminous green moss or the shadows of trees and clouds dancing across lush grassland. You might catch the wonderful crisp, fresh, earthy scent of recent rain lingering in the breeze. If you’re a coastal wanderer, you might ditch your socks and feel the soft, damp sand gently yielding under your feet, and taste the salty air on your tongue. And wherever you go, your spirits will rise as you hear lyrical birdsong and the gentle drone of insects which mark the beginning of easier times.

Now imagine removing one of your senses. Suddenly, you can no longer see, hear, smell, feel or taste. Your world is dark, or silent, or lacks tactile or scent simulation. How do you think that would change your interaction with the landscape?

Living with a hidden disability

In my early teens, I was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss in both ears. We don’t know what caused it – perhaps a virus when I was a child – or how long I’d had the loss for. The diagnosis explained a lot of things, such as why I never picked up the phone (I couldn’t hear it ringing), why I didn’t know the lyrics to popular songs (I couldn’t make them out) and why I didn’t understand what was going on in films or at the theatre (I couldn’t follow the dialogue).

I’m not sure when I stopped hearing birdsong. I have memories of listening to the dawn chorus when I stayed in my grandparents’ cottage in Suffolk as a young child. I can imagine the light, chattering chirruping of a goldfinch, and the iconic “little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheeeeese” of a yellowhammer – so I must have heard those calls at some point in my early years. Now, the skies are silent.

When sound disappears

My hearing loss is sensorineural, which means it’s caused by damage to the structures in my inner ear or auditory nerve. For me, this manifests as virtually no high frequency hearing. I can’t hear many everyday sounds such as alarms, sirens, doorbells and high musical notes. The loss also severely limits the amount of speech I can hear, as consonants are higher-frequency sounds and are usually outside of my limited hearing range.

So, that explains why I’m unable to hear birdsong. I’m also unable to experience other iconic sounds that bring depth and joy to journeys outdoors: tinkling steams, chirping insects, and the wind whistling through the grass. When I’m outside, the soundscape is dominated by wind and traffic. It may surprise you to learn that I prefer to run with headphones. This isn’t so much because I enjoy the music – I often can’t tell what song is playing – but because the rhythmic beat of the bass tones gives me something to focus on.

Making outdoor spaces more inclusive

While great progress is being made to make the outdoors more welcoming and inclusive for all, more can be done to enhance outdoor experiences for those with sensory deprivation. I would love to see more tactile interpretation boards along trails as this is a great way of engaging with the landscape through touch. Visitor centre staff could be trained in alternative communication methods to speech, such as basic British Sign Language (BSL) or Makaton, so they can hold simple conversations with those who have different learning and communication needs. Braille and closed captions could be used more widely to improve accessibility of visitor information.

However, I don’t want to give the impression that those with sensory impairments or other disabilities are somehow “worse off” than those with full sensory, cognitive and physical capabilities. It’s just that our experiences are different, and it’s important that this is recognised.

Finding ways to connect

Yes, I do sometimes feel sad that I can’t experience the rich orchestra of the British countryside, and yes, having very limited hearing does mean that I have to navigate some situations carefully – walking along country roads with blind corners can be dangerous if you can’t hear cars approaching. However, as I have lived with hearing loss for most of my life, I can’t say from personal experience whether my appreciation of, and engagement with, the outdoors is any more or less rich and beautiful than anyone else’s. In fact, I’ve learnt to make the most of the tools that are available to me to ‘listen’ to sounds in different ways.

It may seem ironic that technology, which can serve to distance us from nature, can provide powerful tools to help us connect with our natural environment. Avid bird watchers will be familiar with an app called Merlin, which identifies birds using sound, photos and behaviours. They may be less familiar with Merlin’s less sophisticated cousin, BirdNET, which simply identifies the species through their vocalisation (songs and calls). You use your device to record the vocalisation, and the app will display the bird’s spectrogram – a unique, visual representation of the sound frequencies. It’s very clever and means that even if you can’t hear birdsong, you can see what it looks like and learn to identify a species through the different patterns displayed.

If you’re wondering how I know when a bird is calling so that I can record it – I don’t, unless there’s someone with me who will tell me! When I am outside, I will often ask those I’m with to describe what they can hear and how it makes them feel – whether it’s birds, insects, babbling brooks or the faint rustling of leaves. Not only does this encourage them to listen more closely, but it also helps me to imagine what a world with these sounds might be like.

Using our senses differently

Having some form of sensory deprivation can make you very grateful for the senses available to you. While I lack high-frequency hearing, I feel fortunate to have residual hearing in lower frequencies. This means I can still enjoy the powerful roar of a waterfall, the gentle coo of a wood pigeon and the exciting shock of a thunderclap. I am particularly sensitive to touch and love feeling the gentle warmth of the spring sun on my face, the rough bark of an ancient oak under my fingers, and smooth pebbles in my pocket which I’ve stashed for skimming later.

Next time you step outside, I encourage you to use your senses – differently. If you can see, try closing your eyes. If you can hear, try covering your ears. How does this affect your experience?  What do you notice, that you hadn’t noticed before? For a few moments, step into my silent world – and discover how beautiful it is.

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