CANCER IS LIKE AN AUTUMN HIKE

You're probably wondering how in the world I can compare cancer to an autumn hike.
I'm not talking about the early autumn days, when the leaves are still on the trees and everything is painted in glorious color. I'm talking about the later days, when the leaves have fallen upon the trail, and when you look around you, the trees are bare.
This is the time of the year when footing is precarious. You never know what lies beneath the leaves, but every step of the way brings the crunching sound of your boots on the ground. Sometimes you slip, lose your balance, and start to slide.

It's the time of year when the trail disappears under the vast sameness of the ground cover, and you have to rely on your keen eye to find the subtle dips and rises of the ground to guide you.

I go hiking with my little Yorkie friend. Any other time of the year, she is scampering through the woods, bold and curious. She climbs boulders and hops right over big logs across the trail. She feels confident in the woods, exploring every nook and cranny and hole. But in the fall, she has trouble moving through all those dead leaves. Even she doesn't know what lies under them, and sometimes she falls over tree limbs and rocks. She becomes timid. The crackle of the leaves must be deafening to her.

With cancer, you never really know what lies beneath the surface. You hope for the best, but sometimes you can stumble over the unseen obstacles. It's hard to know what to do and where to go, because when you look out on the horizon, all you can think about is that cancer. You sometimes wait for it to crop up unexpectedly. And it's so hard to think straight, until you know that it is in remission.

And that's why cancer is like an autumn hike. You go slowly. You study the terrain. You look for the clues to point you in the right direction. You try to find your way using all of your senses.

But there are also trade-offs to being on the trail in the fall. This is the time of year there is more sky above you. You can see further, because the trees are bare, so you get a broader view. In the vast sameness of the woods, where all you see are dead leaves on the ground and bare trees, you can also begin to see other things when you look. The treasures of the forest begin to reveal themselves to you. There might be a small grove of new pines emerging, or an unusual mushroom with a crooked cap on its head. You might discover, as I did today, the remnants of an old stone wall, from a couple hundred years ago, half-buried on the wooded hillside. It could even be something as simple as an aerial dance performed by winged insects, caught in a sunbeam. These things only appear when you look for them. Sometimes you have to force yourself to find the beauty in the never-ending brown landscape of fallen leaves.

To a hiker, the forest is never the same experience twice. Every hike looks and feels different. Things change, sometimes evolving over time. But you come to rely on your senses to help you navigate the unseen and unexpected. You train yourself to look for the pleasant surprises along the way. Let cancer be more than just a disease that affects your life. Let it be an opportunity of which you take charge. You may not be able to change the season of your life, but you can choose what you discover within it. Find the treasures that life offers along the way. Appreciate the goodness you stumble upon. Celebrate the love that shows itself. These are the things that really matter most.