In September of 2008, Devon Raney had a surfing accident. It was a bad one — so bad, in fact, that he lost 85 percent of his sight. He hit his head on the bottom in Northern Oregon, which triggered a genetic disorder. He had already lived an extraordinary life. It was full of his passions: surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding. Those, of course, generally rely on sight, but Raney didn’t give up. It was a rough road, but although his physical vision dimmed, the vision for what he loved never did.
He learned to look at things differently, and in the process figured out a way to develop a style that used his remaining peripheral vision to keep on doing what he loved to do.
From that experience comes a book called Still Sideways: Riding the Edge Again After Losing My Sight.
“Still Sideways makes the case for the sustaining power of nature for a new generation of outdoor enthusiasts: the late Gen X / early millennial generation that has one foot firmly in adulthood and the other foot buckled into a binding,” reads the Amazon description. “Readers will relate to Devon’s stubborn refusal to organize his life around convention and will be inspired by how his dogged devotion to shredding brings him salvation, not comeuppance, when it all hits the fan. A must-read for any mid-life adventurer, Still Sideways intersperses a gripping narrative of Devon’s incredible decade and flashbacks of formative experiences from his youth and young adulthood with humor, candor, and authenticity.”
