When Sam Chandler heard that the summer camp he’d been attending for years planned to launch an adventure camp, he was sold. Chandler — who at 17 is a rising senior at Tuscola High School in Waynesville — was quick to sign up for the week of ziplining, hiking and whitewater rafting at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. He came back for a second year, and, when he’d maxed out the two-year cap on adventure camp attendance, returned this year as a counselor.

It would be a common story of summer camp memories and corresponding summer camp allegiance, but for one simple fact: Chandler, like the rest of the teens embarking on these outdoor excursions, is mostly blind. 

With a visitor in the house and his crate door open, Adam is all kinds of excited. The lanky black lab bounds down the hall, eager to have his head rubbed, his back petted, his chewy bone tossed.

“He’ll try to eat the baby toys, or if [my son] Owen has food, he’ll want it and that kind of stuff, and he tries to get into everything he shouldn’t,” his owner Crystal Plemmons says, nabbing Adam’s collar.