Some evenings ago driving home from my last client of the day, an odd apparition appeared. It was dark out and I was on the last leg of the drive, just past the fish farm. In the middle of the headlight-illuminated road stood what looked to be a long-legged rat wearing overshoes, its stretch-nosed face turned up toward me with a pleasant if inquisitive expression. When I mentioned the odd sighting to a friend who was visiting, he said it was a muskrat. Perhaps, I said vaguely, my mind worrying at the schedule of doctor's appointments ahead of me and the unknowns they represented.

A week later..appointments met, surgery scheduled, preliminaries arranged, information gleaned...I have sulked my way through a spot of resistance, pulled up my metaphorical socks, and pronounced myself ready to embark on this journey called surviving breast cancer. I have no doubt at all that I will survive it. There may be surprises and unpleasantness along the way, but the current news is positive.

I write as a poster-woman for regular mammograms performed by top-notch professionals at a central medical center. Because my primary care provider prods me annually, I have been compliant if dismissive. No one in my family has ever had breast cancer. My expectation of ever encountering it personally was less than zero. But I was wrong.

So I am pondering that muskrat and considering its news. S/he is "Wazhushk" in the Ojibway language, spelled Wajashk by extended relatives I once visited on their northern Ontario Reserve. They named their Fish Camp and cabins Wajashk, to honor muskrat. The cabins are trim and painted yellow, and sit alongside the beautifully turbulent French river.

Muskrat is critical to the Anishnabeg, for she dove through the seemingly bottomless waters and retrieved soil crucial for First Woman to begin life on this turtleback world. Wajashk was the least of the water creatures, expected to fail, but she did not. Without Wajashk life would not have taken hold on Turtle's back, and we would not be.

So also, perhaps, is Muskrat critical to my new world. Perhaps this musing is the start of my own "Muskrat News"...notes of an unexpected journey begun as I step into my seventieth year confronted with cancer. What could be better than that!