Superbloom

Dear Friends –

Tomorrow I’ll start my fifth round of Moxie, so I write this with a decent amount of pre-cycle blahs. The good news is that I continue to tolerate the treatment fairly well, and there’s nothing small or unimportant about that. The lousy news is that all of these cycles really are lousy. I’m zapped of energy, and wander around in a bit of a haze for a couple of days.

For those who are eager for more detail here on what constitutes lousy, we can have a long conversation about how 90% of my mountain trek is mainly about attending to my nose. Who knew that cancer is practically a part time job dealing with losing the membranes in your nose? I didn’t. In any case, last week I bought five boxes of Kleenex and went through the entire stock.

I know what you’re all wondering. No, I don’t have a Costco membership. For some reason I like the idea of just buying five boxes at a time each week and being shocked that I’ve torn through my whole supply in a matter of days. I have no idea why.

But I suspect zero people here are all that interested in the Nose Drama. So I’ll share an update here from my days in between cycles, which are always more memorable and noteworthy.

In recent days I heard about a burst of floral color happening over at Folsom Lake, which by this time of year is usually full from our winter and spring rains. But not this year. This year, we’re edging ever closer to a drought and Folsom Lake has barely any water.

Instead of a dry lakebed, something spectacular has happened. Millions of lupine flowers, along with a burst of yellow wildflowers, have burst forth throughout the lake. It’s a superbloom, and apparently this kind of explosion of color only happens once in a generation. When a lack of lake water combines with relatively cool days, flowers flourish.

Lucy and I got up this past Sunday and decided we had to walk among those blooms. So we packed up our Covid puppy, Bonnie, and headed out for a two hour trek to bask in all the beauty.

Did you know you could drive a four-hour roundtrip and listen to Taylor Swift the entire time and manage to not have a song repeated? It’s true!

So after our first two-hour installment of Taylor, we found our way to Folsom Lake, and meandered down to what was supposed to be a lake. Instead – today, and for a few days more – it’s this harvest of never-ending bluish purple and yellow. And green. And a blue sky, and a trickle of a stream, with tadpoles dreaming big frog dreams.

How do you describe a superbloom? It’s marvelous and joyous and all kinds of sweet.

But mainly it’s a surprise. What are all these lupines doing here? They actually shouldn’t be here at all. A lake should be full of new water, and life. Instead there’s this very temporary surge of goodness, uninvited, but still somehow glorious.

As we edged closer to the smallest remnant of a shallow lake, I turned back to gaze at all those blooms. And I wondered if all those flowers were more tragic than glorious. Were they just a cruel tease of sweetness before the crush of another drought takes hold?

It’s tempting to think so. But I decided there’s something more a superbloom can reveal. Perhaps all this spontaneous color is a telling reminder that miracles will persist, even in a drought. Even in cancer. Even in a pandemic.

Perhaps it’s a wakeup call to savor each bloom, knowing how fragile each one is from season to season.

Maybe a superbloom is this dramatic invitation to simply pay attention, to all of it. The prelude of beautiful before a possibly terrible chapter.

Empathy begins with paying attention. Those lupines were like little sentinels beckoning Lucy and me to crouch down, inhale the fragrance, give thanks, and prepare for what could be a long road ahead.

My cancer – my mountain trek – has been surrounded by superbloom moments. Each of you is a faithful lupine, showing up in the most wondrous and surprising ways. And I’m forever grateful.

May the rains return. May next year’s lake be full. May those tadpoles grow up to be clever little frogs.

May Moxie hit her targets well. And may we all have the chance to gaze in wonder at the surprising superblooms that miraculously soften the hardest and lousiest days. And may we all gaze in wonder at all the faithful and common blooms along our path.

xoxo