For many people with colorblindness, fall foliage doesn’t do much for them. But at one spot, on the edge of Nashville’s Radnor Lake, there’s now a way for them to get a glimpse of the season’s splendor.
For most guys with colorblindness — and it is predominantly men — the world appears in various shades of dull green. But there’s some new technology that can help.
“It’s a bunch of colors I haven’t seen,” says 12-year-old Jordan Whitehead of Greenbriar, with his eyes pressed against the holes of the viewfinder.
He searches the hillside across the lake for the first blotches of fall color. Seeing multiple hues as the leaves change is new for him.
“I’m looking at this one tree, and it’s like yellow and orange,” he says.
The viewfinders have a special lens inside them to keep colors from overlapping in the brain — what causes colorblindness in the first place. They’re donated by Enchroma, which developed the technology. The Tennessee Department of Tourism pays the $3,000 for the heavy duty binoculars mounted on a swiveling post.
The state started installing the viewfinders a few years ago at busy lookouts in the Smokies (and the resulting promotional video could bring a grown man to tears).
Radnor Lake is No. 13 and the first in Middle Tennessee. So, Donald Tate drove down from Goodlettsville to check it out.
“It’s amazing actually. Wow, that is different,” he says to himself while taking in the contrasting colors. “Ok, so this is what everybody else sees.”
Tate says he may return in a week or two when the maples and birches are really showing off. But now he knows the lenses work for him. They don’t for everybody.
He’s thinking he may spring for the pricy glasses that do the same thing.
“I could wear them out when I do my three-mile walk I do in the morning,” he says. “This is my favorite time of the year, going to the park.”
Tate says he’s always loved fall, but now he understands a bit more of what he’s been missing.
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