On the summer solstice and our wedding anniversary, Mary and I were hiking with our friend Fred. While climbing a steep hillside in a National Forest, we stopped to catch our breath and watch some female elk and their young watch us. The young had lost their spotted coats, but their mothers had not lost their protective nature. We kept our distance and shared the joy of this wild moment. Thankful, we resumed walking through knee-high grass dotted with colorful wildflowers.

Until the ringing of my cell phone shattered the wild silence.

I usually kill the phone when I hike, but I was awaiting a call from my urologist with the results of a prostate biopsy. I glanced at the phone’s screen; it was him. I felt relief and dread. I would finally know the results; they might be bad.

“I have to take this call,” I said. Mary jerked her head toward me, concern obvious; she knew about the call. I gave her a nod. As I turned away, Mary and Fred silently looked at each other and found a seat on a couch-sized boulder left by a melting glacier at the end of the last ice age. I walked a few paces, took a deep breath, and put the phone on speaker. Nerves tingling, I managed a little small talk.

The urologist quickly moved to the heart of the matter: “Unfortunately, we did find cancer…”

My shoulders sagged, and my stomach tightened as he described how the biopsy revealed prostate cancer cells with varying degrees of aggressiveness. One set of cells was not very aggressive; one was medium aggressive. But a very aggressive third set concerned him. And that concerned me.

He recommended...

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