Those twinkles aren't little stars. That's the city skyline - glittering office towers, the pure-white Domino Sugars sign - coming to illuminated life as a misty day melts into night.
Reflected colors are painting the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, a masterpiece Gary Norman can't see as he stands on the dock outside the Baltimore Rowing Club and makes ready to take a practice spin.
"The water and everything is kind of this bluish-gray darkness to me," he says.
Norman, 30, an attorney from Pikesville, is the club's first blind rower. His golden Labrador guide dog, Langer, is tied to a pole inside the boathouse, snoozing. Club member Alice Lium, who is about to step into the stern of a two-person shell, is temporarily serving as Norman's eyes.
"Walk straight toward my voice," she says.
He edges toward the side of the dock, gingerly sticks one foot into the bottom of the boat, then another, and eases into a seat in the bow. Lium passes him two oars.
They shove off. Backs bend. Arms pull. The cigar-shaped boat arcs to the right, heading for the archway under the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." That's how The Great Gatsby ends. In Norman's case, his boat is bearing him toward the future, toward a return to the athletic life.
He grew up in Ohio and earned a black belt in tae kwon do, but had to give up the sport in ninth grade. Though his parents have normal vision, Gary and older brother Charles slowly went blind from the degenerative eye condition retinitis pigmentosa.
Norman went on to graduate from Cleveland State University law school, where a classmate kept praising the virtues of rowing. It wasn't until Norman got a job in Maryland with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that he had time to give it a try.
"I'm kind of a self-starter," he says.
Thus, despite his disability, he enrolled last fall in one of the novice classes at Baltimore Rowing Club. But group instruction proved difficult. Too many of the learning-curve cues - proper placement of the hands in rowing motion, when to turn the oar blades perpendicular to the water - are vision-based.
He opted to work out during the winter on a rowing machine and last spring hired club member Dione Bakule to be his tutor. They rowed several times a week for five months. She was impressed by her pupil's determination.
"I gained respect for the whole blind rowing community," says Bakule, 28, a social worker. "He's the most impatient person I know. He didn't want to just row. He wanted to compete."
And compete they did. In September, Norman and Bakule entered an 800-meter mixed doubles race at Philadelphia's Bayada Regatta, a national event for disabled rowers. They didn't win, but Norman got hooked on the sport.
Someday he hopes to qualify for the Paralympic Games. But there's additional motivation: to be a ground-breaker role model, to recruit enough blind rowers to have their own novice class at the rowing club.
"Disabled people are heavily segregated in society," says Norman. "They're discriminated against for employment, but even more so for athletic opportunities."
His more immediate plans are simply to work the kinks out of his stroke. That will require thousands of practice hours. "I like the ... discipline," Norman says, "the sense of focusing your body through mental control."
Norman is more than 200 pounds, stocky with thick legs. He's got a naturally powerful stroke, notes Lium. The tricky part for him and every other newcomer, she adds, is to swear off those big, circular pulls and learn the beauty of nuance - "so that your hands are moving in a little rectangle."
"The goal," Norman reminds himself, "is to have a constant, fluid motion."
He and Lium stay on the river about 90 minutes, long enough to complete two counterclockwise loops around the boat basin, about five miles of rowing.
When finished, it's after 8 o'clock. Night has fallen in full. They emerge from the bluish-gray darkness and approach the floodlit boathouse.
Suddenly, it's bright enough to read the message on the front of Gary Norman's T-shirt: You Need Not See the Stars to Reach Them.
Rowing lessons
Experienced rowers sometimes row with eyes closed to improve their "feel" for the boat and their stroke. Gary Norman, the first blind member of the Baltimore Rowing Club, is trying to develop that sensibility from scratch.
Much of his early exposure to the sport came on dry land. He logged countless hours on a rowing machine last winter. His time for a 5,000-meter workout has dropped from 26 minutes, 15 seconds to about 23 minutes. He tries to do 35 minutes on the stair climber most days, in addition to leg presses, machine-assisted pull-ups, triceps extensions and sit-ups.
Baltimore Rowing Club (410-355-5649; www.baltimorerowing.org) offers seven-week novice rowing courses, usually beginning in April, June and August. The price this year was $175. The club has boats to accommodate singles, doubles, quads and eights. "Learn to Row Day" open house is held in June.
Baltimore Adapted Recreation & Sports (410-771-4606; www.barsinfo.org) is a local source for disabled athletes looking to participate in kayaking, skiing and other activities.
