Momentous Times
August 3, 2022
Momentous Times!
Greetings everyone and Happy August. It’s been quite awhile since I wrote. I apologize. A lot has happened and I have been waiting for some dust to settle. To begin, in January, just before the semester began, Matt and I escaped to Cumberland Falls, which is a state park in southern Kentucky, and experienced a serious winter wonderland. We knew a storm was coming and arrived at our cabin early. It snowed about 10”, which is a very large amount of snow for this region, and we had two days to explore a pristine, white, wonderous world. Cumberland Falls calls itself “The Niagara of the South”. The falls are definitely impressive, and we got to enjoy them without seeing another human being. Apparently, the falls produce a moonbow for a few nights every month. We didn’t get to witness that phenomenon, but it sounds pretty magnificent. There are only a couple of other places in the world that have moonbows (most notably Victoria Falls). Maybe we’ll need to make a second visit in the future.
Snowy wonderland at Cumberland Falls
Back in Cincinnati, the Spring semester started off with a bang, and never slowed down. I taught a lab-based course (Zooarchaeology), and it was the first in-person course I have taught in three years. It took some adjustment both for me and the students to get used to meeting in a classroom together. I did like my class, and it was overall a rewarding semester, but it was busy. There are quite a few other demands on my time in Spring semesters (for example dealing with applications from prospective graduate students in my role as graduate director for our Geology department), and it was challenging at times to stay on top of everything.
One thing that definitely affected my ability to focus on teaching was my breast cancer diagnosis in early March. This news may come as a surprise to many of you. It’s not something I have publicized widely. While reading in bed, I discovered a strange little bump in my left breast. I continued to feel it for a few nights in a row, and I decided to get it checked out. It’s a good thing I did. Thanks to my observant fingers, I caught my cancer early, while the tumor was still small and the cancer hadn’t spread elsewhere in my body. That means I got to keep most of my breast and lymph nodes. Overall, I experienced a lot of kindness and understanding from everyone, including my family, doctors, students, colleagues, and friends. Matt has been incredibly supportive. Nevertheless, the Spring was not the best one I have had. In particular, I experienced a lot of anxiety before we knew exactly what was going on inside my body. We spent Spring Break at a lovely state park in northern Alabama called DeSoto Falls. As the name implies, is full of waterfalls, and it was a wonderful respite from Cincy and the cancer diagnosis.
I had surgery on the last day of March (so I can say that I both learned I had cancer, and had it removed from my body all in the same month!). Mom came down for awhile and helped us after my surgery, and my students wrote me some very sweet cards and brought me treats. I didn’t have to do chemotherapy, which was a huge relief, but did have radiation therapy. That wrapped up in early June, and of course, we immediately headed north. I’m nearly 100% again but suspect that this experience will have some long-lasting effects regarding my values and priorities in life.
Ropes course at DeSoto Falls. Felt like a fairy village.
I’ve got more to share about our summer below, but first, a little more about the eventful Spring... We continued to explore the city on foot, and our adventures took us to some otherwise unknown hidden parts of the city, including some streets that feel very much like they are off the grid and could be in rural Appalachia. We also found an excellent spot to watch trains. Most of these adventures were delightful. However, on Mother’s Day, I accidentally impaled my shin on a sharp 3⁄4” wooden stake that went through about 4 inches of flesh and
popped out the back side of my calf. Fittingly, this was about 5minutes after I had mentioned to Matt that we were probably overdue for do a First-Aid training. The wound, which is the kind that I had never planned to witness other than in medical books, is still healing, and I’m sure I’ll have an impressive scar in perpetuity. My takeaways from all of this are (1) always watch where you are walking, (2) maybe we won’t be quite so adventurous with our urban hikes in the future, and (3) it’s nice to have a surgeon with a good sense of humor.
Waiting for a ride after impaling my leg.
So that’s enough bad news. We’ve passed into the second half of 2022 and I am currently doing much better both emotionally and physically! We’ve been up on Mackinac Island since mid-June. It has been a beautiful and cool summer here, and we have taken full advantage. We started off by planting about 80 little bare-rooted trees and shrubs in the yard, most of which are clearly thriving. We were also delighted to discover that a lot of the plants we like on the island have independently colonized our yard. We have had lovely wildflowers all summer, including some lady slipper orchids! We’ve also been painting, scrubbing, staining, and sanding our porches. This is something we had hoped would happen last summer, but the painters who painted the rest of the house wanted to let the wood cure. So... we get to do it. It has been a ton of work, but the house is looking great, and I truly do have a sense of pride when I look at what we’ve accomplished. We were also careful to not
disturb the little nest left by the pair of phoebes who raised a family on our back porch earlier this summer.
We haven’t strayed far from the island. Just a few days back in Cincy in July, and a few days in Sault Sainte Marie for my birthday at the end of June. That was a fun trip. Again, it was cool (topped out at about 60°F on the warmest day) but it was beautiful. And it was really fun to see a part of the country that (1) we haven’t seen much of previously, and (2) has importance to my mom (she lived in the city briefly when she was in high school). The city is famous for its locks, which allow ship traffic between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. On my birthday proper, we took a day trip to White Fish Point, which houses the Shipwreck Museum. We drove along the water and the scenery was stunning. This is a remote region that still feels very wild, and it was extremely remote and wild in the past. We were recently viewing some old maps at the Mackinac Art Museum and noticed that an early French map of the region labeled the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the note “savage animals everywhere”.
Matt’s family is visiting next week and then we will be returning to Cincinnati. The Fall semester will begin, and I will have duties to attend to and students to check on. Again, it’s been quite a year. And as I sit on our front porch writing this note, I’m still having trouble believing any of it is real. But I can feel the slats of the wooden rocking chair against my back and legs, I can hear the birds and wind rustling in the trees, I can smell the flowers and the recently stained wood, and I can see our yard with all of its nascent plants soaking up the sun. I think that the second half of 2022 is going to be a whole lot better than the first. I’m feeling good and we saw a family of river otters the other evening playing in the waves and on the rocky beach, and it took my breath away to witness something so intimate, sweet and rare. I’ll be in touch again soon (hopefully with only good news). And remember, if you’d like to see more photos, check out brookecrowley.shutterfly.com.
Until then, take care and enjoy the remainder of the summer.