by Susan Glass
On Friday of Labor Day weekend 2018, my husband John, my sister Jo Lynn, her friend Jim, and I visited and toured the Fort Point National Monument, which is situated just at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Fort Point is one of 15 California national parks that now features an audio-described park brochure and mp3 tour. You can download both on a Victor Stream or other audio player, and you can also download the brochure on your iPhone. This will sound familiar to those of you who visited Muir Woods in late April, or Yosemite last November. Originally Fort Point was a military base active during the Civil War. Its purpose was to defend San Francisco and the West Coast from attacks by foreign powers who either sympathized with the Confederacy, or still had hopes of claiming West Coast territories for themselves. As things turned out, Fort Point never fired an offensive shot, but it was, and remains in its restored form, an impressive establishment. In addition to listening to the Mp3 brochure, John and I and our companions were treated to a one and a half-hour tour--usually tours are only 20 minutes--given by an enthusiastic and well-informed ranger named Nate. Nate had never conducted a tour for blind people before, but he proved himself a natural, marking off distances for us by talking to us as he walked them, and always facing in whatever direction he was pointing. He also encouraged us to touch everything: the iron-fortified oak doors of the building, the exquisite brick and stone masonry, the casks or barrels where gunpowder was stored, the muzzles of two different types of canons, as well as two different kinds of canonballs. We climbed a winding and precipitous staircase to the top of the building (fourth floor) where guards on watch during the 19th century would have paced the parapet. We toured the living quarters for military officers and for privates. The poor privates slept 24 men to a room, two men lying in each bunk and positioned head to toe so they'd be less likely to give one another head lice.
The weather on the day we visited was sunny, cold, and windy, pretty typical for the Golden Gate area except that usually its foggy, cold, and windy. We had a great time, and relayed our enthusiasm to the Parks Service, The University of Hawaii, and Google, who are the entities responsible for bringing audio-described brochures to all of California's national parks. There are several more parks in California that need visits and feedback from the blind and visually impaired community, and the Google grant will pay $500 for every park visit by a CCB chapter. John and I did not collect any funds because we were visiting Fort Point as private citizens, not as representatives of SVCB. You'll recall that when SVCB and the San Francisco chapter visited Muir Woods together, we split the $500 between our two chapters, each receiving $250. Please consider planning a chapter visit to a national park in your area. Let's enjoy our state's national parks together, provide feedback that benefits all blind and visually impaired park visitors, and earn a little bit for our chapter's treasury.
