a Van Gogh moment

I went upstairs to fix my pigtails, putting my hair up for the beginning of the road trip. I looked in the mirror and noticed a dark spot on my ear. Huh! Too much sun from living in California, I thought, I'll ask mom, see what she says. So, I hopped downstairs and pointed out the mole to mom, thinking she would say sure, whatever, looks fine. But her response was something more like: huh, maybe we should take it off? Do you want me to take it off? My mom made a few calls, and my dad picked up some surgical supplies from the clinic in town. We postponed the trip for a few hours.

Better safe than sorry we all thought. I was annoyed, but thought it should be done, a couple hours wasn't going to make much difference on our month long trip. My ear was numbed, my mole plunked into formaldehyde and sent to pathology: routine for any biopsy.

Off we went to Portland, Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone and the Tetons, when my mom called with the results. Well, she said, your labs came back, and the pathologist couldn't decide if it was dysplastic (changing rapidly) or a melanoma... they sent it to OHSU (the university medical school in Portland). Not to worry, she said, wear sunscreen, it's probably fine.

We drove on to South Dakota, to Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park and on to Iowa and Wisconsin. Then the second phone call: a melanoma. I think I was a bit numb, I think I said you're kidding. I sat on it for that afternoon and in the morning I actually read my pathology report. "Despite the patient's young age, the findings are consonant with melanoma... Additional treatment to ensure complete removal would be prudent." I started making phone calls. It started to sink in: A melanoma: the deadliest of all skin cancers.

The problem was mainly that I was somewhere in Iowa, we were heading to Virginia and my insurance company is in Oregon. My first call was to UNC Chapel Hill, but they required an initial appointment and they were booked out through to November. I then called University of Virginia Dermatology. By this point I was sobbing and could barely answer questions. The original receptionist was very kind and transferred me to surgery; surgery transferred me to a head and neck specialist. The head and neck specialist was an answering machine. I left a message and continued to call other physicians, my mom, my insurance company, but to no avail. No one wanted to take my insurance, those that would see me without insurance refused to give me an estimate for the procedure. Those that would accept my insurance had no space or time for me. I was beginning to panic.

At one point I seriously considered taking a knife to my own ear, going to the ER and having it stitched up. At least I would get treated, (and quickly!), and it would probably be a lot cheaper. I just wanted the cancer to go away, and no one seemed to care. At 4 pm, just before all offices close, my mom called. I had an appointment in Oregon in two weeks. And following that appointment, I had another to get my entire body checked for additional precancerous or cancerous moles. Why? My chances of getting another melanoma just jumped 14% higher as I've already had one.

The Elusive Moose

Tuesday, sometime in September: we finally headed east, straight for the Tetons. I had visited Yellowstone and the Tetons roughly 8 years ago, although I remember the experience as if it were yesterday. We hiked up cascade canyon, over the pass to Lake solitude and down paintbrush canyon: 26 miles in one day, mostly in the hopes of seeing moose. We lucked out and saw several moose from a safe distance throughout the day; on the hillside meadows grazing in the wildflowers and in the streams munching on some willow.

At one point I walked within 5 feet of one, I only noticed because it looked up at me as I cruised past. My heart raced, I kept walking, I didn't look back. I was excited to have seen a moose so close, but realized also that she could have taken me out in just a few minutes.

Moose, although they look so cute and awkward you might be tempted to waltz on up, and give one a kiss on the nose and expect it to just stand there and wink at you, they really are fairly grumpy creatures. I've heard rumors that moose kill far more people per year than bears, its just that bears have 2" claws and big pointy teeth to scare us with, whilst moose just look uncoordinated. I went home from my first visit, satisfied with having seen moose, and not having seen and bear.

So on this trip I expected to see many moose. We were, after all, planning on backpacking into the peaks and camping out for two nights in the backcountry. We even inquired about the canyons most likely to have moose when planning our trip. 8 hours and 13 miles of hiking and still no moose. We started making up stories about where the moose might hang out, what they do with their free time, bilingual moose that translate for humans, and of course we even tried speaking moose in hopes of attracting them to our route, but to no avail. We saw not one moose.

On day two we crossed paths with a couple that had been out for a couple days and mentioned off hand "lot of wildlife down there", and proceeded to explain that they had stumbled upon a mama bear and her cub, crossed paths with one moose, and watched several others from afar. With excitement we pushed on, hoping to catch them before the day grew too hot, and the moose retreated into the willows.

After only about a mile, we saw the moose cross the valley below us, and we hurried on. When we reached the valley floor, she was nowhere to be seen. We waited. Still nothing, and so we moved on, slightly satisfied that at least we had seen a glimpse. Several hours and 8 miles later we saw another moose grazing on the willow in the stream. We ventured closer, (but still at least 300-400 feet away, enough distance to run and hide should she decide she didn't like us). We watched, and were thoroughly satisfied.

The next morning, camped by the lake we spotted a moose in the water. We wandered closer. I stopped when her ears turned towards us. Andrew kept walking. When I felt unreasonably uncomfortable, I signaled to Andrew to stop. She watched us. She shook and drank, then started sauntering towards us. I started backwards, all the while facing her. Then she broke into a run towards Andrew, snorting and grunting in warning. I'm pretty sure that the moose encounter guidelines say 1) never get closer than 300 feet to a moose, and 2) should you encounter a moose at closer range, walk backwards away from the moose slowly. We turned and ran. She was running full out, charging us, and we were running with 40-pound packs on our backs; we turned into the woods and heard her pounding hooves growing close.

We ran until we couldn't run anymore, stopping to listen. Nothing. She must have followed us down the beach, and stopped when she couldn't see us anymore. I gave Andrew a look that said: "would you have gotten that close to a bear?". I walked on.

8 miles down the trail and we rounded a corner only to catch a glimpse of a mama moose and her calf in the trail. We startled one another, and they moved away, just down the trail. We waited. She kept one ear on us. "not again" I thought to myself. We waited and waited but she didn't move from her willow munching along the trail. Finally, roughly 20 minutes later, she moved ever so slightly off the trail. "if we just walk past quickly and pay no attention to her, we'll be fine". There was one other thing that instilled a bit of confidence in me. We wouldn't be her target. Another visitor had come from the other direction and was standing not 25 feet from her. Surely, if she was angry, she would charge him first. We went for it, walking quickly by the man and the moose, and with a sigh of relief walked out back into the woods out of sight.

Nearly there, not 2 miles from the end of the trail I spotted a big brown thing with legs, and I stopped in my tracks. "Why would a moose be out here on the plains? Enough with the moose already!" I looked again, and realized it was the national park sign. I walked on, exhausted, and relieved.