KarunaNews Story

Soar Experiences is a small non-profit tour operator serving people with limited mobility. (Soar stands for “Specialized Outdoor Adaptive Recreation.”) They offer nature trips for people in Trackchairs, which is described as a cross between a wheelchair and a tank. The all-terrain vehicles are slow, set at a top speed of 3mph (5km/h), but steady. They can easily roll over rocks, tree roots, gravel, sand or mud, making the chairs game changers for people with physical limitations who want to experience the outdoors. “If I had to stay indoors, I’d probably be gone,” said Eddie Slick, 73, who drove two-and-a-half hours to get to an event hosted by SOAR. The fear of being cooped up pushed him to heavily invest in mobility equipment: he customized his ATV to enable him to continue hunting and installed a crane into his van to lift his motorized wheelchair. Research supports the commonsense premise that time in nature is time well spent. A metanalysis in the journal Healthcare found that “engagement in adaptive sports showed a positive impact on the mental quality of life among adults with physical disabilities."