Soft Hackles

 

Having rashly agreed to do a fly-tying class for my local Trout Unlimited Chapter, it behooves me to talk a little bit about my roughly 40-year-long love affair with simple soft hackle wet flies.  This affair began in 1982during a seasonal gig in Yellowstone National Park, when a co-worker fished rings around me at a lake full of huge fish with a simple little hare’s ear and partridge.

Wets are probably the oldest kinds of artificial flies, dating to Roman times, and they can be incredibly effective.  I usually fish them on the swing, two at a cast, down and across, mending to sink them deeper or to make them swim to the surface. If the fish want them, detecting strikes is not an issue. I also fish them as the dropper in a dry-dropper rig, and they work like a charm.  The patterns are cheap and easy to learn and to tie, and for me, that really matters.  Big fish are often found in dense cover and tight spots where it's easy to lose flies. Losing flies that take a couple minutes to tie and cost a few cents is not painful.

Pennsylvania, where I live, was the home of anangler named Jim Leisenring who played a big role in keeping the ancient art of wet fly fishing alive and in updating the patterns and techniques in the mid-20^th century. There’s a deep, simple and unhurried heritage to them that fits nicely with the cane rods I build and fish, and the patient and contemplative approach I like when I fish.  So I like them, and the fish like them too.

 

 

 

The Patterns

Hare’s Ear and Partridge

Hook: Heavy Wire Wet Fly, 10’s to 18’s

Thread: Black 6/0 Nylon

Rib: Copper wire over a strand of pearly crystal flash (or just copper or brass wire)

Body: Hare’s ear, rough dubbed, lots of guard hairs

Hackle: Hungarian Partridge or Rough Grouse or Mottled Hen, half stripped, 3 or 4 turns.

Note: This is my go-to. If I was only allowed to fish with one fly…

 

Partridge and Orange

Hook: Heavy Wire Wet Fly, 10’s and 12’s

Thread: Orange silk or nylon, 6/0

Rib: Copper wire

Body: Orange thread, with a Hare’s Ear thorax

Hackle: Hungarian Partridge, half stripped, 2 to 4 turns.

Note: I fish these in the fall for the October Caddis. You can use other colors of thread or floss and vary the sizes to imitate a lot of different bugs.

 

Peacock and Grouse

Hook: Heavy Wire Wet Fly, Size 12 and 14

Thread: Black 6/0 Nylon

Rib: None, but see body design below

Body: Herl Rope, 3 or 4 strands of peacock herl twisted with a thread loop and a single strand of crystal flash.

Hackle: English Grouse, half stripped, 3 or 4 turns

Note: This is a deadly Little Black Stonefly imitation, and in smaller sizes it’s a great Grannom fly too.

 

Sulfur Emerger

Hook: Heavy Wire Wet Fly, 14

Thread: Primrose 6/0 Nylon

Rib: Copper wire

Body: Abdomen and tail are Pheasant Tail ribbed with wire, thorax is sulfer muskrat or rabbit

Hackle: Hungarian Partridge, half strip, 3 turns

Note: I swing these during the Sulfur hatch and I also fish them as a dropper behind the dry fly. I sometimes roll the bottom with them behind a couple split shot. You can vary the thorax color and hook size to cover any mayfly hatch.

 

Blue Quill Emerger

Hook: Heavy Wire Wet Fly, 18

Thread: Black 8/0 Nylon

Rib: None

Tail: Dun hen fibers

Body: Dun quill or biot abdomen, grey muskrat thorax

Hackle: Dun hen, full hackle, 2 to 4 wraps.

Note: A great Baetis fly.  I fish these as droppers behind the dry quite a bit, and I also swing them. You can vary the size and color of this design for any mayfly.

The Daughter of the Stars

 Copyright 2022
Joe Baker, Boiling Springs PA

Note: The etymology of the word Shenandoah seems murky. The best guess is a derivation from the Oneida language that denotes “deer” or maybe “spruce”. In the Depression, National Park promoters seem to have cooked up an alternate Algonkian derivation as “Daughter (or Child) of the stars.”
It’s probably bullshit, but I like the way it sounds…

Lewis Mountain
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man… nobility is being superior to your former self.”  Ernest Hemingway

I have been coming here since I was about 17 years old, and on Thursday I’ll be 66. You’d think that 49 years would be long enough to understand a place, but that’s not true. Like most every old fart with any sense at all, the older I get, the more obvious and deeply felt my ignorance. It would seem we are all here to learn.
 

I drove the three hours south to this formerly segregated ridge-top campground in Shenandoah National Park to hike and fish with my dear old friend Shel Browder.  Forty years ago, Shel and I did much of the Appalachian Trail together, and this durable friendship is one of the best and most important things I derived from spending six months living out of a backpack. 

I also arrive in a whirlwind of change. I will have my left knee replaced in late November.  Last year about this time, a surgeon explained to me that to be eligible for the surgery, I would have to lose 50 pounds. I have lost about 100 pounds. I have walked miles 6 days a week, I spent hours in a gym doing pushups, and I have not eaten very much. This is the fourth time in my life I’ve gained and lost more than 100 pounds.  It will be the last time. My appearance is not the only thing that’s changed.

I arrived at the tiny cabin we rented in late afternoon, about an hour ahead of Shel, so I hung out on the porch fooling with a mandolin and considering what constitutes a healthy life.  I come to no conclusions, beyond the fact that it begins between the ears.  Somewhere along the journey to 50 pounds it occurred to me that getting there would be the easy part. Staying there would require a harder journey.  The yo-yos of huge gains and losses of weight are a manifestation of cycles of depression and anger. A hard and clear-eyed look within would be the only way to break the cycle, and that would take courage I’ve never mustered before, nor even considered possible. In small ways, in fits and starts, with the help and support of my loved ones, the courage I needed began to appear. It became more important to be a better man, and to leave my sorrow behind me, than it did to prepare for a surgery.  When my mind crossed that line, the weight loss just followed as blossoms follow spring. Maybe it was the nearness of the hereafter, maybe it was the kindness of the people who care for me, maybe it was simply enlightenment born of age and experience, I’m not sure I’ll ever know, but my heart turned.  My devils did not disappear. Nobody’s devils ever disappear. I just know them for who they are, and I understand them. They are still part of me, but they may no longer claim my body or my mind.  

Those belong to me.  I am a free man.  

Presently Shel shows up.  We go through our forty-year-old greeting ritual and catch up on news of family and friends.  The older we get the more hard news gets blended with the good. That said, age brings appreciation for simply being here.  I’ve already lived a decade longer than my father did and given my lengthy list of bad habits, regrettable choices, and risky behaviors, simply sitting here and enjoying the mountain air seems miraculous.

We take a short walk up to a rocky outcrop on the summit of Lewis Mountain, enjoy the view, and hobble down to the cabin again.  Shel’s hip is to be replaced a week before my knee, so that we have two functional legs between us. But we make do.

We get a fire going in the wood stove of the cabin, heat up dinner, and enjoy cocktails.  There is a surprising amount of single malt whiskey in our goods and chattels, as well as a guitar, a mandolin, and a fiddle. So, we make a little noise, laugh at old stories, grouse about politics, and carry on a conversation we started in 1981. It will end when one of us croaks. Hopefully that won’t be anytime soon. I am never more comfortable than when I am among old friends and family in the mountains, watching the leaves change color and the sun descend. As I get older, I try to notice that more and savor it. 

The Mill Prong
“Homo Sapiens have not yet failed. Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands.” Greta Thunberg

The next morning, we load up light packs, and hump a couple miles down into a hollow on the east side of the Blue Ridge.  When we first went hiking together, this would have taken us maybe a half hour, now it takes twice that hobbling along on our ruined and arthritic joints. The slow pace does allow for close observation and is in some ways both blessing and affliction.

We have been meeting here to fish and hike for decades, so we have seen things change. Places that were healthy young forests have become overgrown with stilt grass, Japanese Honeysuckle, kudzu, and other invasives. A lot of the old hemlocks have succumbed to Wooly Adelgids and other pests, and they stand naked and skeletal in the bright light of what used to be shady glens. The deer, once so plentiful in this park as to be a nuisance, are dying of chronic wasting disease (CWD). The bears have mange.

Our generation did this. We all had a hand in it. There was data in the 1980’s indicating that the climate was changing and that the ecological communities around us were changing too. We whistled through the graveyard of our own Eden, and kept burning hydrocarbons, importing pests, wasting land and soil, and putting off difficult choices. We shit in our own nest.  We are now reaping the painful harvest of our profligacy, and that dark harvest will be visited on our grandchildren. It’s not something to be proud of. 

The passing of those decades has also brought what might be construed as wisdom. The years taught us to see past the ugliness and to understand that change is and has always been the norm, not the exception. I relearned this lesson streamside. Shortly after stringing up a flyrod, I began to work my way up the stream bank, hung up my boot on something, and damn near fell into the icy water. When I looked to see what I’d tripped on, I found it was a rusted piece of a hog wire fence. 

In the 30’s, when this place became a national park, this was a farm. Livestock grazed in an open meadow here. The hog wire kept somebody’s pigs out of a cornfield or an apple orchard. Probably the latter, because there are still a few scraggly apple trees scattered here and there in the woods. The folks that farmed up here, Scots-Irish and German hillbillies, had been here since the 18th century, and thought they always would be. Their ancestors displaced native people who’d been here for millennia. They never saw change coming either. 

The federal government took many farms by eminent domain to establish the park. The farmers were paid fair market value in the 30’s, which wasn’t much.  They moved to the surrounding small towns and scraped by.  They and their descendants found work in the park as maintenance staff or trail or road crews. They watched their homes get pulled down or rot into the ground, their fields turn to woods, their fences, this fence, disappear beneath the lush green of Appalachia.  Their world vanished, as ours is now.

But just upstream of the hogwire, my small dry fly disappears in a blip at the base of a tiny cascade, and I catch and quickly release a small brook trout. The trout’s ancestors were here before the native people.  Maybe the changing climate will drive them into oblivion, maybe not, but for now, they persist as they have since the Pleistocene. As we shoulder our packs to hike out, I reflect that persistence is all any of us have any right to hope for. 

White Oak Canyon
“When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine
that all the world will be in love with night…” Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

The next morning, Shel’s 76th birthday, we drove out of the park to the east side and re-entered at the mouth of White Oak Canyon.  A big front had blown in, and we knew the water would be cold and the fishing slow.  But the canyon is lovely and doesn’t get fished that much, and while catching fish is sort of the point, it’s not the only reason to go fishing. At a footbridge over White Oak Run, we split up, Shel heading upstream from the bridge and me walking downstream a couple hundred yards to fish back to the bridge. Once again, I’m struck by the irony that while one rarely goes fishing alone, the actual angling is usually a solitary pursuit.  

I am presented with a marvelous, delicious set of small plunge pools, runs, and riffles; very trouty looking water.  But the sudden drop in temperature has shut the fish down more or less completely.  I have been fishing small Appalachian trout rivers my whole adult life, and while I make no claim to profound expertise, I do know what works. I put the right flies in the right places many times, but have no fish, nor even any strikes, to show for it. As I methodically pick my way along the boulders and back toward the bridge, my decrepit knee fails me, and for a second time in two days, I damn near pitch myself face first into the creek. It’s a close enough call to shake me up quite a bit, and I scramble up the bank to the bridge, take a seat, calm my nerves a spell, and wait for Shel. 

He's overdue.  I find myself growing anxious. My old friend’s hip is as ruined as my knee, and he’s a decade older than me.  Anything could have happened. I begin to contemplate how I can go search for him with my diminished mobility, and how I might render assistance or go get help if he’s in real trouble.   This engenders a brief fit of shame and regret.  When we were young men, nobody would have had to worry about either of us getting lost or injured in the woods. In fact, if you were looking for people to send into a wild place to hunt for or assist an injured person, either one of us would have been a good choice. Just as I am about to start shouting for him, I see Shel carefully picking his way through the rocks back to the rendezvous point. He’s fine, just old, beat up, and slow. 

It dawns on me quite clearly watching Shel from the bridge, that we’re both going to die. It doesn’t scare me. I’ve seen a lot of people very dear to me leave this world, and I accept that my time will come. The revelation comes not as a dreadful trumpeting harbinger, but in the sweet gurgle of the rushing little river at my feet.  We are both of this place, of this lovely wild canyon, and we will remain so even after we are gone. It is in an odd way, deeply comforting. 

But we ain’t dead yet. There are two enormous steaks waiting for us back at camp, and also whiskey.  Hobbling along back to the trailhead parking lot, we race the autumn dusk toward the car and dinner, the leaves ablaze in gold and crimson. We are, in this moment, very much alive. 

 
Hawksbill
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.” Mark Twain

It got cold as hell overnight, into the low 20’s, and the fire in the little stove played out in the wee hours.  My down bag did its job, but eventually an old man who survived prostate cancer is going to have to get up.  Fortunately for me, Shel is a compulsively early riser, and by the time I summon up the nerve to unzip the bag, he has the stove running again. 

Over coffee we consider our options. At these temperatures, the streams will all be profoundly asleep and the fishing very poor to nonexistent. So rather than choosing to descend into another hollow, we elect to climb. It’s a cold, spectacularly clear morning, and Hawksbill, the highest mountain in the park, beckons.  Hawksbill’s summit rises over 4,000 feet, and there is a spectacular view from the top. By 9:00AM we are ascending the mile-long trail.

The trail is popular, and our arthritic joints apparently make this climb look a bit like the stations of the cross to the other hikers we encounter on the way up. We assure our fellow climbers that we’re fine and don’t need rescuing, and we tell a few of them that we’re both a month or so away from joint replacement surgery. Some of them tell us that they admire our courage (a few plainly think we’re nuts but are too nice to say anything).  

I’m not sure either of us are all that brave. We are just determined to live life, to meet the world on its own terms, to see the sky and the earth below from a mountain peak. The reward outweighs the risk and the pain. So much of every life is like that. Career changes, uprootings, love, kids, conflicts: they all demand fortitude. Nothing is ever guaranteed, and failure can be painful or even fatal.  But failure to muster the courage is an acceptance of a life not worth living.

As we near the summit, and the ridgetop opens up, it finally happens. Forty years ago, a week or two into my AT adventure I learned, as every hiker does, that if you want to take in the scenery, stop walking and take in the scenery. Otherwise, you keep your eyes down and watch for obstacles. Here, atop Hawksbill’s summit ridge, I forget the lesson, and suddenly crash to the ground. Shel and other hikers rush up to help me, but despite a cut up hand and knee, I’m laughing when I hit the ground.  I don’t pop right up like I did when I was young, but I do get up. I’m secretly delighted to realize that despite my infirmities I’m still pretty Goddamned tough. 

After assuring all concerned that I’m ok, we proceed on to the peak. The whole Blue Ridge and the distant Ridge and Valley mountains, the Allegheny Plateau, the Virginia Piedmont, the blue, blue heavens, all open up in all their autumn glory. We drink it as thirsty men consume water from a cold spring, and it is just as satisfying. Forty years ago, someone took a photo of us on a similar ridge a ways south of here, and we ask a bystander to take our picture now. Looking at them side by side, we are still recognizably us, just older and tattier, but still obviously in love with wild places. 

It's time to hobble down to the trailhead, eat lunch, and drive home, but some of me will stay here. I can never really leave the mountains.     

Barking

By Jim Harrison

The moon comes up.

The moon goes down.

This is to inform you

that I didn’t die young.

Age swept past me

but I caught up.

Spring has begun here and each day

brings new birds up from Mexico.

Yesterday I got a call from the outside

world but I said no in thunder.

I was a dog on a short chain

and now there’s no chain.

Lament in Springtime

A Lament in Springtime  

April 2022 

Copyright, Joe Baker, Boiling Springs PA

I haven’t been writing about politics much since late 2019. I haven’t changed my mind or undergone any epiphanies I’m aware of (I can barely spell the word, so I don’t have them very often). To be honest, I’m just tired. Doing my little part to make Trump disappear was a heavy lift and combined with an epidemic and lots of dumbass behavior that made it worse, I’m just shell shocked and strung out. But I’ve been thinking a lot. It’s a combination of hitting 65, having a brush with cancer, and taking a lot of walks. Something has been germinating, and now seems to have popped out of this pensive soil. 

Like most everyone else, this is the most divided I’ve seen this country. About a third of us now believe something that is empirically and demonstrably untrue like they believe the sun rises in the east. A lot of folks on both sides of the political spectrum view folks with opposing views as less than themselves, which is the first and most critical step to violence. There are lots of historical precedents: Germany in the 30’s, Russia in the late 19th century, this country in the 1850’s, China many times. This always end badly. Maybe the violence is inevitable, I have no way of knowing, but I feel like I should say something. 

I am not interested in changing anybody’s mind. That’s a fool’s errand. I just want to point a few things out for anyone interested enough to listen. Maybe it will help. Maybe not… 

A lot of the judgement that’s going on right now is based on long-standing mythology and collective historical amnesia. In the little rural town I live in, we had an angry school board meeting over history curriculum. The loudest people were vocally opposed to critical race theory being taught here in little old Cumberland County Pa. That’s fine, because it’s not taught here, nor in any other US school district I’m aware of. There’s a link below to a nice scholarly article about it from Education Week. People can read it if they want to. The yelling and screaming didn’t interest me that much, but one comment I heard gets to what I think is an important point. One of the loudest people in the room expressed her frustration at being “…made to feel ashamed that I’m a white Christian woman!” 

This was uttered in a room completely full of white mostly Christian folks, but these days irony is apparently quite dead. 

Historically and demographically speaking, the problem here is: she ain’t “white”. To put a finer point on it, nobody is. The idea of “race” from a biological perspective is just horseshit. It’s the original fake news. If you want to know more about it, there’s a link below to a popular level article you might read. 

Judging by her blond hair, fair complexion, and surname, the nice lady at the school board meeting is a descendant of Scots Irish Presbyterian and German Anabaptist immigrants who arrived in this corner of the world in the 18th century. I assume she knows next to nothing about the experience of these immigrants. A detailed recital is beyond the scope of this little Jeremiad but suffice to say it was unpleasant. Her forbearers arrived here poor, persecuted, speaking funny languages, and practicing odd religions. The waves of immigrants who preceded them called them strange, dirty, dishonest, dangerous, and so on. This was mostly due to the wealthiest folks encouraging this behavior and using the recent arrivals as scapegoats for everything from price gouging to low wages. After a generation or two, the descendants of these very folks visited the same bigotry on succeeding waves of immigrants. My own mom was an immigrant from Italy in the 20’s, so she got to find out what wop and guinea and dago meant in elementary school. 

I think it would be a very good thing indeed for everyone to do a little study of their own family history. Genealogy is fascinating work, and among the many sometimes astonishing discoveries one encounters is almost always evidence of hardship, mistreatment, and bigotry visited on your own people. You will encounter stories of your ancestors overcoming this crap, and doing noble, amazing, admirable, brave, extraordinary, and mundane things. You will also inevitably find evidence of some of your own family doing absolutely awful things. That’s OK and it’s to be expected. I have a great grandfather who was not Mother Theresa. 

To quote Henry Louis Gates “Guilt is not inherited.” There are truly good, salt-of-the-earth people on this earth whose ancestors include Nazi’s, Klan members, Fascists, Stalinists, slave traders, mercenaries, and various kinds of scary criminals. But they’re not them. All lives are self-made. A deep dig into your own family can take you to some pretty dreadful places, but they can inform you and impart wisdom and understanding. 

My point is this: learning history, including and maybe especially unpleasant history, is good for you. Understanding other people’s experiences and pain and accomplishments is good for you. Learning your own family history, including the shitty parts, is good for you. Knowledge and experience really is power. 

De-fanging the anger and tribalism in this country is mostly a matter of understanding where your neighbors are coming from and how they think. Those things are largely a product of their history and of what happened to them, sometimes generations back. If you want to see why your neighbors and friends think or vote or act in ways you don’t understand and maybe don’t like, a lot of the answers are in their roots and in your own, and you’ll have to dig a little to find them. Failure to do so impoverishes you and leaves you vulnerable to quacks and crackpots and creeps who have a vested and usually financial interest in keeping you ignorant and angry. 

 This is important. We are on the precipice of real violence. I live about a half hour from Gettysburg Battlefield. There you can walk among the endless rows of white gravestones and contemplate the reality of being at your neighbors’ throats. If you would avoid that, the path forward lies behind you. Go find it. 

 On critical race theory 

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05  

On race and biology 

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/race-is-real-but-its-not-genetic

A Winter's Tale

 

Joe Baker
Boiling Springs, Pa.
Copyright December 2020

Preamble

To be honest, much of the writing I’ve seen about cancer is either so rife with cliché and banality, or so brimming with sorrow and anger that I actually considered not writing about it at all. Also, while a lot of great writing is fearlessly revelatory, I’m basically a stodgy old man who feels like my personal stuff is not really your business. In the end, I was persuaded that there were some folks in need that might find this helpful. I also felt like I might have something a little different to say.

So here it is.

Diagnosis

I found out late last September that I have prostate cancer. I can’t say I was entirely surprised. The prolonged process of diagnosis included two PSA tests, an MRI, and finally a biopsy, and took three months. By the time my urologist sat me down and told me, I sort of knew what was coming.

Also mitigating the shock was the malady’s ubiquity in old farts (I’m 64). More than 10% of men contract it, and most of the afflicted are in their 60’s, 70’s or older. It is the second most common malignancy in modern males, just behind skin cancer. The underlying causes are not well understood, nor is its tendency to be more common and virulent in the African American community.

Prostate cancer is also a solid example of evolution in a head on collision with the wonders of 20th and 21st century public health successes. It was likely very rare before the last century, because we simply didn’t live that long.

If it is caught early and confined to the prostate, survival rates are high. My cousin was diagnosed nearly 30 years ago, and when he passed a couple years back, it was not from prostate cancer. If it is caught later and has metastasized into the bone marrow and elsewhere, the chances of surviving five years or more are much diminished. An old colleague and friend of mine got a late diagnosis a couple years ago, and he died this summer. My case, thankfully, seems to be early stage, but like life itself there is always some degree of uncertainty.

This new reality leaves me pensive. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s I had a real terror of mortality, so much so that I would have grim nightmares and terrors from time-to-time. Also, like many young men, I regularly engaged in high-risk behaviors of a shockingly wide variety, and numerous friends and relatives have wondered at my survival. Now, at 64, I no longer dread the void. Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not anxious to die anytime soon, I’m just not terrified. My own close brushes, and the painful loss of so many people so dear to me have granted me a degree of acceptance that I’m happy to have and count as a blessing. Curiously, with this acceptance has come the gradual diminution of the madcap lunacy that characterized much of my youth. Fear did not cause this, aspiration did. I’m too fucking busy. There is still so much to do and see and say, and my time is limited under the best circumstances. Why shorten it further? The remaining days, including even the very worst days, are all gifts, and I know it.

Consultation

I have the great good fortune to be attended by a number of physicians and medical professionals who are all in the same mid-to-late 30’s cohort. They are old enough and well-trained enough to be competent, not old enough to be embittered or indifferent, and by dumb luck managed to escape a variety of rigorous medical programs without having their personalities excised. Basic decency and a sense of humor are an important part of health care. Among these folks is my urologist, Andrew.

After breaking the bad news to me, we discussed treatment.

“Your Gleason Scores are almost all 6’s, which is great, but one is a 7. For patients with scores of 6 or less, we normally just monitor the disease and don’t treat. For scores of 8 or higher, there is often surgical removal of the prostate, which can be a nasty and bloody affair. In cases like this, a middle course of treatment with targeted radiation is a good choice. If I were in your shoes, that’s what I’d elect to do.”

“OK, so what’s involved in the radiation treatment?”

Andrew went on to detail the expected sequence. This begins with an injection of a powerful drug that greatly suppresses the body’s testosterone levels for a six-month period. It turns out that prostate cancer, like some breast cancers, is dependent on hormones. With the loss of testosterone, the cancer will go into remission.

“In fact, I could make your cancer go into permanent remission tomorrow. All I would have to do is remove your testicles!”

“I rather like my testicles. If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”

“Calm down! Purely hypothetical…”

The injection itself has side effects. The most obvious are a decrease in libido, some general malaise, and the occasional hot flash (Andrew termed it “man-o-pause”). Four weeks after the injection, I would have what are termed “gold seeds” implanted in my prostate. These are rice grain size pellets of gold that serve as targets for the radiation, precisely framing the tumor in three dimensions and allowing for the administration of radiation with astonishing accuracy. Two weeks later, daily treatments of radiation would begin, and would continue each weekday for 28 days. Following the treatment, I would need to be monitored for any recurrence for the rest of my life, but the treatment has been around for a long time and has a well-established and highly successful track record.

This seemed like a no-brainer, but the decision was complicated by a couple of considerations. The timing of things would require that the radiation treatments would coincide with the winter holidays and would certainly cast a pall on what are supposed to be celebratory occasions. They would also take place in the throes of the worst pandemic in a century. Contracting COVID while being treated with radiation would certainly not be pleasant and might be fatal. Given the gravity of the potential consequences inherent in a postponement, I made my decision on the spot. I gave my assent to the treatment and I put my trust in the professional caregivers who would supervise it.

I should say here that my trust was anchored in a life-long belief in the veracity and power of scientific inquiry. I am trained as a scientist, and I understand how it works. I grew up in a country where science was respected. Science put us on the moon, conquered polio, harnessed the atom, reconstructed our genetic and evolutionary history, mapped the earth and the visible universe, put the power of massive computers and satellite technology into a device that fits in my pants pocket, and generally made the unknown knowable. The scientific method is simply a way of methodical and data-driven problem solving. While it advances in fits and starts with plenty of failed ideas, ethical lapses, and incorrect assumptions, it works and is the best paradigm we have for understanding our world. I put my trust in verifiable and careful research and in the dedication and rigor of the professionals who conduct it and use the results for good. I like my odds.

Treatment

As anyone with prostate problems will tell you, there is really only one way to access the affected organ. Treatment involves a variety of usually kind and decent people who apologetically put their hands and sometimes instruments up your backside. The more invasive of these procedures mercifully take place under anesthesia. As I woke up in the recovery room after the implantation of the gold seeds, Dr. Andrew looked in on me.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m coming around. How did the implantation go?”

“I would characterize it as a slam dunk. I even hung on the rim for a bit!”

Despite my grogginess and the surgical mask that covered my lower face, I was able to give him a glare baleful enough to cause him to scuttle giggling out of the recovery room.

A week later my care was transferred to a radiation oncologist and his nursing and radiation technology staff. The good doctor is much more formal than Andrew, probably a product of the deeply technical nature of his specialty and its frequently dire nature, but we bonded over those technical issues. He asked me if I had any questions about my course of treatment.

“Yes. I was wondering if the radiation is to be administered…how shall I say this…internally or externally?”

“Ahh! An excellent question! It shows you have given this some thought!”

Indeed, I had.

The good news was external administration is the normal practice. The good doctor’s commitment to care and healing were obvious, and he seemed to be happy to have a patient interested in diving into the technical weeds with him.

The initial consultations took me through the nuts and bolts of the treatment, its efficacy, and its side effects. The radiation is guided by a number of rigid metrics that must be utterly precise and those first visits involved preparations meant to guide a tiny beam of radiation to a target measured in millimeters. After all, this is the same atomic radiation emitted by the Hiroshima bomb and the Chernobyl reactor, and carries the same destructive potential. As Dr Oppenheimer knew, it is nothing to fool with.

To that end, I was asked to appear at the clinic in loose clothing and a pair of shoes I could wear for every treatment. I was whisked back to a CAT-scanner and laid prone on a table. A mold was made of my legs and shod feet. This would lock my legs firmly and precisely in place throughout the course of treatment. Simultaneously the scanner made an image of my prostate that would guide the radiation. To ensure that the alignment remained consistent, a series of three bullseyes were marked on my skin with a Sharpie. To someone who has spent a career carefully labeling uncountable field bags of artifacts and samples with these same indelible ink pens, it certainly seemed that the spirits of those whose possessions I have dug up over the years had now exacted a deeply ironic and witty revenge.

Prior to the first treatment I was told how to prepare and what to expect. Each treatment would take less than 15 minutes or so. A successful treatment involved appearing with empty bowels and as full a bladder as possible. The full bladder would ensure that the upper bowel was pushed out of harm’s way as the radiation was administered. It would also ensure that I was pretty uncomfortable during each treatment. Even with these preparations, there would likely be some mild to moderate side effects, all of them below the belt. Frankly, they didn’t sound too bad, and they definitely sounded better than metastatic cancer. On Tuesday, December the 1st, the radiation treatments began.

Daily treatment begins at home by pre-charging the bladder with copious and timed draughts of coffee and water. Since my treatment coincided with the massive spike of coronavirus in the late fall and early winter of 2020 and 2021, each arrival at the oncology clinic began by passing through a gauntlet of two sets of COVID questions, a digital thermometer, and the issuance of a disposable mask to replace my cloth version. I would then be whisked through the waiting room and sent instantly back to radiology.

The radiation apparatus looks like something out of Star Wars. There is a table that feeds the prone patient into a massive whirling white array of machinery that looks a bit like a dragon’s mouth. The machine includes both imaging hardware and a radiation emitter. The table can be moved in 3 dimensions in millimetric increments. Treatment for the prostate involves lying flat on your back, with your legs locked in the mold and your pants hiked down as the table draws you into the maw of the machine. There is not even a trail of breadcrumbs back to your dignity, but the radiologists are kind, decent and professional people, and that helps. The CAT scanner ensures your bladder is full and allows for the finetuning of the table to its precise optimal location. As the beam of radiation is activated, there is a high-pitched whirring noise as the machine rotates around your nether regions. In short order the whole procedure is over, and you can rush to the bathroom to pee, then drive home.

The daily repose on the treatment bed requires you to be absolutely motionless, despite significant urinary urgency. It is also attended by piped-in music, which being the holiday season, was usually a variety of old chestnuts like Elvis (Blue Christmas), Bing (White Christmas), Nat (Merry Christmas to You), and so on. One especially surreal morning broke with the seasonal theme to include Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it’s an electric guitar and synthesizer anthem with lyrics evoking the involuntary administration of powerful psychoactive drugs to a terrified, shrieking and restrained patient.

Perhaps surreal is not strong enough, but it’ll have to do.

Side Effects

In the midst of my treatment, a dear old friend checked in by phone from LA. Mike is a real live wire who goes way back with me. When I broke the news, there ensued a discussion about the details, including how I was feeling. I copped to the intestinal discomfort I was enduring, and then he got a little more personal.

“So what about you-know-what?”

“Well to be honest, if somebody walked in here with a pistol, put it to my head, and told me I had to perform or else…”

“You’d be toast! They’d have to call the fuckin priest! Last rites motherfucker!!”

And so on…The hysterical laughter felt really good. The reality is pretty tough.

My digestive tract is irritated and inflamed by radiation, with the expected results. Viagra jokes aside, your sexuality is a central component of who you are, and the treatment’s side effects can leave you feeling like someone else, someone much duller and sadder, is inhabiting your body. In the late stages of the 28 days of treatment, life is distilled to just holding on: eyes on the prize.

But there are also unlooked-for side effects for which I am grateful.

My daily visits to the clinic, like the rest of my life in this pandemic, are as isolating as possible. I am kept out of the large waiting room near the entrance and whisked back to a smaller waiting area in radiology. I’m rarely in this area more than a few minutes before being treated. Even so, I am not alone. Each morning I see the others, 6 feet away, masked like me. We acknowledge each other with a nod, a hello, small talk. In all of our eyes, which is all any of us show to the world, anxious anticipation is visible. In some there is weariness or pain. In others, terror or resignation. The diagnoses, specific treatments, and the progress of both treatment and disease dictate the nature of our expressions. We are in a strange way, of a tribe. My mother and her sister, Italian immigrants, would have called us gli afflitti di Dio, God’s own afflicted. As such, tradition held we were blessed with a status of knowledge and understanding that brought us nearer to the Almighty. Maybe there’s some truth to that.

I live in the white, Appalachian heartland. My roots on my father’s side go centuries deep into rural Pennsylvania, and I like it here, but in the last few years I have seen more of the bad in this place than the good. I have come to detest the meanness, the casual bigotry, the selfishness and jingoism, the appeal to violence, the disrespect for education and scholarship, the devaluation of the environment, the ignorance of history, the mindblowing gullibility and willingness to succumb to utterly ridiculous conspiracy theories and obvious lies: the things that led inexorably to the events of January 6th. My anger has eaten away at me. I need to put it down.

Anger leads inevitably to hatred, and hatred requires that you view the source of your anger as less than yourself. A look into the eyes of the other folks in the oncology center is convincing evidence that we are the same. The ICU at our little regional hospital is now full of folks who saw COVID as a hoax and saw wearing a mask and taking precautions as an assault on their liberty. I remain disgusted by that kind of thinking, but I simply can’t hate them. They are suffering and, in some cases, they are dying. They too are God’s own. So are their terrified and bereaved families.

Things have to change. We must all understand that people who are different from us are our equals. The path to that understanding leads through dialogue, listening, and forbearance. It requires recognition of our common frailty, imperfection, and mortality. It requires endless patience. It mostly requires kindness. This path leads away from hatred, to a place of quiet and of grace.

I have learned that journey does not begin with other people, but with me. I learned that from my illness, from the other patients, from the kind and heroic technicians and nurses and doctors who care for all of us without judgement. This understanding is priceless. I am humbled in the face of it.

Redemption

Shortly after my diagnosis, I was sitting on my back porch having a socially distant conversation with a dear old friend. He’s had some prostate problems too, and he has an appointment coming up with his urologist. When I asked if anyone else in his family had prostate cancer, he mentioned his father.

His dad was a Scottish immigrant, who lived to be 90-something before passing a couple years ago. Sometime after his 90th, he had taken his father for a physical, and then met with the doctor.

“I must tell you your father has a greatly enlarged prostate and a high score on his PSA test. It’s probably cancerous.”

“I see. What’s to be done?”

“Well given his age and other infirmities, we probably won’t treat it. I just thought you should know.”

“OK. Well, I’ll be sure to update his Tinder profile then.”

Make no mistake about it, it’s the love and good humor of your friends and family that will carry you through things like this. I haven’t told a lot of folks about the diagnosis, but the small circle of people who know has drawn tightly around me. The support is usually quiet, a touch on the shoulder or a little hug, offers to run errands, simple endearments, but the affection is palpable. Distant family and friends call me all the time. One of my former field directors sends me a card at the end of each week of treatment. I am “checked on” daily and it holds me up.

I am deeply moved by this. Frankly, the only thing I’ve done to deserve it is to try not to be a prick. I don’t think the reason you treat people well should be an expectation of reward or support. Good is worth doing for its own sake. But there is no denying that the best guarantee of kindness from the people in your life is your own decency. Do not ever forget that.

Another source of succor has been attention paid to my own health. Since treatment began, I have missed no workouts. COVID has kept me out of the gym, but I have adapted, and I push my body for an hour or so six days a week. I have intentionally lost 15 pounds over the course of treatment. The great value of exercise and healthy eating is as much psychological as it is physical. A cancer diagnosis can rob you of agency, but some attention to the rest of your health can restore your sense of control. The feeling of pushing through a long hike or multiple sets of pushups, even when the treatment has left you tired and cranky, is empowering and exhilarating. My daily regimen has made me feel like I am punching something I can’t really control squarely in the mouth.

It’s worth noting here that constitutionally, I can be a little combative. This has not infrequently gotten me into trouble. You can ask anybody.

Finally, there is a sense of the spiritual that carries me along. As I am a confirmed heathen, this is tricky ground. The devout seek enlightenment and deliverance in Providence. That’s not for me. But I meditate, and I read. I become absorbed in the quiet mathematical beauty of guitar practice. I becalm myself in nature. My deliverance comes in the pre-dawn hoots of the Barred Owls now nesting and courting in a woodlot near one of the walking paths I frequent. I glimpse eternity in trout finning in the Letort or the Big Spring. I am struck silent and contemplative at the sight of a glorious winter sunset over fields and behind the South Mountain. Many of the thoughts expressed in this essay, and the warp and weft of its fabric, came to me while walking in the woods. I am humbled in the quiet grace of the wild, and I see my place therein.

And I am alright.

Ring them Bells 

At the entrance to the radiology treatment room is a large brass bell. When you have your final treatment, you get to give it a vigorous shake and make a little celebratory noise. Next Monday will be my turn. Two of the radiologists that care for me reminded me of the upcoming ceremony just yesterday.

“You should be excited to graduate! We’ll fit you for your cap and gown!”

“Yeah! Of course, the gown is open in the back…”

When the epidemic ends and the clubs re-open, these two really should start a stand-up act.

After the bell ringing, and my usual quick trip to the rest room, there will be a final visit with the oncologist, and the handoff of my care back to the inimitable Dr. Andrew. I will walk out, get in my car, and drive away into the rest of my life. I won’t actually know how successful the treatment was until I get some test results back. I do already know that it has changed me, though I am still considering exactly how.

This has not been my first brush with mortality. I am always aware that no day is guaranteed. That hasn’t changed. But cancer is different. I’ve had many friends and family perish from it. Two of them stand out for me: my darling aunt decades ago, and my dear brother-in-law in 2019. I watched the gradual, insidious and painful decline that preceded their deaths. But I also saw their nobility, wisdom and patience in the face of it. They taught me something about the here and now, and about the beyond. Their sense of humor never failed, nor did their kindness. They spoke openly and they showered care on their families and friends as they themselves were cared for. They were certainly God’s own.

It turns out that knowing how to live, is also knowing how to die. Who knew?

I have no idea if this malady is what will get me, or if something else will. Like everyone fortunate enough to live beyond my middle years there is a black shadow over my shoulder, and I don’t yet know what it looks like or when it will touch me. But it doesn’t really matter. There are people in your life that need your affection, your experience, your understanding. There is always work for your hands. The kindness you impart and the living memory of it will be the measure of your significance in the great whirling and endless wonder of the universe.

The point of it all isn’t to look over your shoulder. It’s to look forward toward the horizon and all the light.

On the morning of January the 11th, 2021, I rang the bell.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

If you or someone you know have been affected by prostate cancer, you might find these resources helpful.



The Prostate Cancer Foundation https://www.pcf.org/

Prostate Cancer Advocacy Groups and Organizations https://prolaris.com/prostate-cancer-advocacy-groups/

Guide to Support Groups in Your Area https://www.ustoo.org/Support-Group-Near-You



This essay is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who are helping to keep me and many others on this side of the grass, to my family, friends, colleagues, former employees, and interns who love me, and to my fellow patients. You’re all in my heart forever.