Once there were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. One day, the mountain people invaded the lowlanders and, as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.
The lowlanders didn’t know how to climb the mountains. They didn’t know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they didn’t know where to find the mountain people or how to track them in the steep terrain.
Even so, they sent out their best party of fighting men to climb the mountain and bring the baby home. The men tried first one method of climbing and then another. They tried one trail and then another. After several days of effort, however, they could climb only several hundred feet.
Feeling hopeless and helpless, the lowlander men decided that the cause was lost, and they prepared to return to their village below. As they were packing their gear for the descent, they saw the baby’s mother walking toward them. They realised that she was coming down the mountain that they hadn’t figured out how to climb.
And then they saw that she had the baby strapped to her back. How could that be?
One man greeted her and said, “We couldn’t climb this mountain. How did you do this when we, the strongest and most able men in the village, couldn’t do it?”
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “It wasn’t your baby.”
By Jim Stovall, You Don’t Have to Be Blind to See (1996)
Jim Stovall (born 1958) is an American writer best known for his bestselling novel The Ultimate Gift. Stovall is blind and is an advocate on behalf of people with blindness. He works to make television and movies accessible to the blind as President of the Narrative Television Network, an organisation that has received various award recognitions, including an Emmy award, a Media Access Award, and an International Film and Video Award. He was chosen as the International Humanitarian of the Year, joining Jimmy Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Mother Teresa as recipients of this honour.
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