Nature lover’s showdown with sun
Barely a month removed from skin cancer surgery, Brian Murphy took to a trail last week for his first post-procedure walk in the sun.
The wildlife photographer, nature lover and fisherman from Walnut Creek noticed movement in the grass ahead along the trail. As he neared, Murphy pulled out a pocket camera.
Just 20 feet away, a bobcat was munching on a pocket gopher for lunch. Right then, Murphy affirmed one of his life lessons: Never go anywhere without a camera.
“Part of my rehab is being out in nature, and it works,” Murphy said. “My legs are tired, but the spirit is returning.”
Murphy is a 25-year field scout who has contributed many sensational wildlife, wildflower and landscape photos that have appeared in The Chronicle. In his career as an engineering technician, he worked for 32 years on capital improvements for the city of Walnut Creek.
He is a conservationist who has restored wildlife habitat in the foothills of Mount Diablo, built nesting boxes for wood ducks and miniature condostyle homes for bats, and has crusaded against the use of mice poison in order to protect owls and other raptors that might eat poisoned prey.
Murphy is also an expert salmon fisherman who brings a crew of regulars on trips aboard the Wacky Jacky out of San Francisco, and who has captured his adventures and amazing sunrises out the Golden Gate with an array of top-tier photos.
Murphy had a rugged, cowboy look, fit, lean and strong, and if you’d run into him over the years, it might have appeared as if he’s made of steel.
But this man of steel was brought to his knees after years of exposure to the sun at work, on the trail and on the ocean. The surgical scar runs from his ear down his neck, across the right side of his face and to his shoulder.
A combination of sustained exposure to the sun and no sunscreen for many years caused a series of sunburns over the years, Murphy said. But even after developing splotches on the side of his face, he didn’t see a doctor. When he did, the diagnosis was skin cancer.
“My Irish skin has never done well in California sunshine,” Murphy said. “In the field, sunscreen tends to get into my eyes and that would make outdoor photography difficult, so I didn’t wear it much.
“I did not deal with some skin cancer. I didn’t think it was a bad cancer. I discovered untreated skin cancer only gets worse and gets into places you think it would not go. It would have been so much simpler to just see the doctor and have it removed in a much less invasive manner.”
During last month’s surgery, doctors removed skin from Murphy’s face, neck and shoulder, a lymph node in his neck, and skin and tissue from surrounding areas in an attempt to cut all of the cancer out. They also tried to create an island of healthy skin around the affected areas.
“The lesson here is if you see something that does not look or feel right, just visit the doctor,” Murphy said. “Skin cancer does not go away. It just gets worse.”
On the trail, Murphy has to move his shoulders and rotate his body now in order to turn, rather than turn his neck.
“The scab,” Murphy explained. “But that’s OK. I’m out in the great outdoors with nature.”
Murphy seems to have the zest of a child as he photographs wildflowers. Turns out, that’s the secret, he said.
“Doctor says I have to take it easy to let things heal,” Murphy said. “That works out fine for me. I’ll just take the 8-year-old inner child out in the open space to look at things. We’ll see what we can find. Moving slow works for me.”
Murphy has always lived in the moment to capture great images afield. One year, on the opening day of salmon season on the Wacky Jacky, I remember many in the cabin trying to catch a few winks of sleep. Yet Murphy was out near the stern with his camera, where he tried to capture a magic moment where the sunrise sent refracted bands of orange across the Golden Gate.
Twenty years ago, I wrote about the scene I witnessed from my airplane at 8,000 feet above the Bay Area, looking across San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate and the headlands of San Francisco and Marin, where refracted sunbeams poured through three tiers of different cloud types.
Murphy was outraged that I had forgotten my camera and sent me one of those cheap disposable cameras with the note, “Now you never have an
excuse again to miss out on a great photo.”
He uses top-tier pro camera gear for landscape and wildflower photography, but always carries a point-and-shoot camera. That is what he used for last week’s surprise bobcat encounter.
“You often don’t see these things coming,” he said.
That’s true for life as well as photography.