The Woods at Dusk

 

It’s dusk in late December and the woods are quiet. I stand on my backyard deck lost in the mystery of nature. Two squirrels chase each other through the snow and deepening shadows. I listen to the stiff maple trees creak in the breeze, and hear the soft click, click, click of empty sunflower shells landing on each other, dropped by wrens and finches at the feeder. The magenta of the sunset flows across the sky, then shifts to violet. 

Do As Well As You Can

 

Barry Lopez died of prostate cancer on December 25, 2020. He didn’t share many details about it. I think he regarded his cancer as a private matter and felt there were more important topics to write about. His impact on environmental writing and awareness of nature is enormous.

I’ve read a couple of interviews that Barry gave after his diagnosis where he talked briefly about cancer, but the only writing I’ve found is three pages in his “Deterioration” essay that was published after his death in Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World. 

Feeling Joy When Feeling Blue

The Worth of Mirth

It can be really hard to feel joy during the winter holidays when you have cancer or any serious medical problem. If we try, we can hold our fears back enough to feel smatterings of happiness and moments of mirth. The uncertainty about what the coming year will bring can make it feel like a blue Christmas, a blue Hannukah. We are so not bubbling over with festive joy.

The holidays are traditionally a time when we renew our faith in people and in matters unseen, and we try to pile up enough hope to get us through the coming year.

The First Day

 

In 2010, at the age of 22, Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The five-year survival rate for adults with this cancer was 33%.

She realized there was a problem when that the itching on her legs wouldn’t go away. This got worse, then she was exhausted all day. It took a year of going to different doctors before she found a doctor who knew what was going on. 

In her book, Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika describes how draining it was to deal with cancer and fear of dying every day for four years as she went through multiple rounds of chemo, radiation therapy, and a bone marrow transplant before she was declared to be cancer-free. Feeling good enough to travel, she went on a three-month road trip to meet some of the people who wrote to her with support or asked questions from their own situations of grief or confinement.