AUSTIN, Texas — For Virginia Rose, an afternoon spent with birds is a good one. She even agreed to meet me at her favorite trail in Austin on a sweltering July afternoon. Rose has been birding for 20 years, which, for those who don’t know, is an activity where you listen to and identify birds, usually with binoculars. 

“It’s just absorbing,” she said.

Rose is the founder of Birdability, an organization that aims to make birding safe and accessible to people with mobility challenges. 

In 1973, at just 14 years old, Rose fell off her horse and broke her back. She’s been in a wheelchair ever since. 

Rose has called Texas home for most of her life. She’s a two-time University of Texas grad and was an AP English teacher for high school juniors. I told her that was my favorite class in high school, and that my teacher, Mr. Greg Randall, was the one who taught me how to look at nature differently and care about it. Fast forward eight years and now I’m reporting on issues related to the environment.

For Rose, the lifelong learning aspect of birding is especially appealing. She also admits that she found her best self through birding. That’s why she wants other people with mobility challenges to experience the benefits, too. 

“We just want to make it so that people who have any kind of access challenge can find a place to bird, to be outside and find their best selves,” she said. “I mean, it sounds like pie in the sky, but it’s happening.”

On the Birdability website, there’s a crowd-sourced map that describes the accessibility features of birding locations all across the world. Outside of the U.S., people have contributed from India, Ecuador, South Africa and more.

“We are actually talking to Chile and Buenos Aires and London,” she said.

Closer to home, Rose frequents the Lake Creek Trail in Austin. For the most part, it’s easy for her to navigate on wheels. But the trail isn’t perfect. She pointed out a few benches that aren’t wheelchair-friendly.

“You can see here the rocks sticking up, and those are next to impossible [for] wheelchairs and possibly walking chairs, or scooters, or canes or anything like that,” she said. “So solve the problem with a cement slab.”

There were also a few bumps in the concrete that she had to “pop a wheelie” over. 

As she juggled her keys, glasses, phone and binoculars, she joked that a little help wouldn’t hurt. 

“I keep thinking I would like to hire a sherpa, and he can have grapes and stuff,” Rose said with a smile.

After retiring from her teaching job, Rose didn’t plan to have another full-time gig. But, she’s having an impact all across the world and she takes pride in that.

“I want to instill in people the spirit of exploration,” Rose said. “I’m convinced that the explorer that’s in all of us gets left behind too often. And I feel like if we can unearth her, dust her off and send her into an exploring mode, we’ll open up worlds that they don’t even know about.”

She said it’s important for people with mobility challenges to put themselves in uncomfortable positions because “once you handle it, you are more empowered than you were when you started.” 

As an English teacher, Rose taught works by Henry David Thoreau, so for now, I’ll leave you with this quote: “Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” 

And that, she is.

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