We were on the top deck of the ferry headed back to Key West, watching the big fort and tiny islands fade from view, when one of the people I met during three days in Dry Tortugas National Park summed up what we had just experienced.
Mark Freund, a deeply tanned 62-year-old basket weaver, has been living in the Keys for about 30 years. His home is a sailboat near Big Pine Key. So he already had plenty of stories to tell, many of them true. But his first visit to the Dry Tortugas, a camping trip with his son Kevin timed to coincide with the fullest of full moons — a sphere so big and bright...
Read more...
The chemo wasn't working. It was destroying a lot of things in Mom's body, just not the large tumor in her bile ducts. So a few weeks ago she made a decision, one that her pastor told her took more courage than fighting merely for the sake of fighting.
She began hospice care. She said she didn't want to be in hospital rooms. She wanted to be home, with her dog and loved ones, enjoying the beauty of the Tucson desert.
In many ways, this has been yet another gift to her three children.
When she stopped the chemo and began palliative care, her quality of life improved within days. How much...
Read more...
I know it has been a while since I updated the blog. I’m not sure where to begin. Arizona, I guess. That’s where I’ve been for most of the time since I last posted something and got, for better and worse, frequently detoured.
I’ve been fortunate, not only to see some amazing places, but to have some fascinating people show them to me. I’ve hung out with dozens of river guides in a remote warehouse near Marble Canyon; helped count and measure cacti in Saguaro NP as part of one of the park service’s longest-running vegetation studies; hiked to the top of the tallest...
Read more...
I went to Tucson, planning to spend a week with my mom in the desert, counting, measuring and pondering the saguaros. I ended up spending a week with my mom in a hospital, thinking about an oak. And a grapefruit.
The day after I arrived, her doctor had came into her room, sat down on a stool and started to explain why she hadn't been feeling quite right. At one point, he took a piece of paper full of her medical information, flipped it over and started drawing a picture.
“Think of a big oak tree,” he said to my mom, several others in the room and, via cell phones held in front of the doctor,...
Read more...
In February, I'm heading to Tucson, Ariz., partly because it is the home of Saguaro National Park, partly because is is the home of my mom.
After my dad died in 1996, my mom moved from Wisconsin to Tucson. He was about to retire, and they were going to travel the country, hitting the national parks they hadn't visited yet. As I sat in the living room of my parents' house listening to the funeral home representative talking about plans for the service, there were brochures for campers sitting on the coffee table. I think about those brochures and plans whenever I start a sentence...
Read more...
Recent Comments