I’m proud to announce the publication of Navigating Hope. This is the seventh in my Ways To Walk series of small softcover books documenting—through photography, prose and map graphics— a number of my short, mostly Winnipeg walks in search of nothing in particular other than some vague understanding of where I am at any particular moment.
Navigating Hope and the other Ways To Walk books can be previewed and purchased at my Blurb Bookstore.
From my prologue to Navigating Hope:
May 24, 2018. Gail and I step off our front porch. We wait for our dog-child Styxx to appear in the front window, as he always will. We wave goodbye, as we always do, and make our way across busy Portage Avenue. We stroll down the quiet residential streets of Winnipeg’s west end, beneath canopies of just-emerging leaves. Winter is behind us. In its place is a fresh explosion of heat and green. This is a time of renewal. Lawn mowers hum with the season’s first cut. Above us, an arborist’s chain saw chatters loudly. And there’s the high-pitched chorus of children playing at recess.
We are on our way to CancerCare Manitoba.
This is not the walk we had planned to take, back in January and February. By rights, we would be well into our plans and preparations for a long walk later this spring. The Via Frangicena was in our sights, a long pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome crossing Britain, France, Switzerland and Italy.
A small lump altered our direction. It would take us on a very different path.
From Gail’s epilogue to Navigating Hope:
For 10 weeks now David has been marking, in pictures, our way through active treatment for my breast cancer. There has been a seemingly endless parade of appointments and procedures during what we have come to term (borrowing from Fidel Castro) the “Special Period”.
We are fortunate. Throughout treatment, we have been able to walk between our home and CancerCare Manitoba – 50 minutes each way along the leafy residential streets of central Winnipeg.
Active treatment ended last week with my ringing a bell.
There’s a tradition among cancer radiation treatment facilities, including CancerCare Manitoba. Immediately after the last radiation session, the patient is invited to ring a bell symbolizing the conclusion of that particular treatment and resumption of life anew.
Navigating Hope and the other Ways To Walk books can be previewed and purchased at my Blurb Bookstore: https://www.blurb.ca/user/davidfirman
Congratulations!! Way to go!!
Gloria