Modern Primitive

 

I’m reaching you by means of a computer balanced on top of a garbage can located on the Camp Tuffit Roadway, just off Lake Mary Ronan. It’s early-morning dark here, and my computer screen and keyboard glow with an insistence uncommon to the off-shore forest understory.

We get neither cell nor internet service at our cabin. To access the internet, I had to walk down the camp roadway to this garbage can stuffed partway under an overhanging bush. The cabins all around me, though fully occupied, remain dark.

Modern primitive, this.

We have been spending most of our time “princess fishing,” which entails me baiting the hook and removing fish while Princess Desiree does the actual fishing. But before we make any judgments about these arrangements, be advised that Desiree cleans and fully processes the fish once we get back to the cabin.

I drink a Cold Smoke beer and watch on in admiration.

Desiree With a Small Perch

Desiree Cleaning a Perch

—Mitchell Hegman

Gone West

Desiree and I drove nearly four hours west. The rivers here flow to a different ocean than those outside the doors of our house. We are staying at Camp Tuffit on Lake Mary Ronan. Tall fir, pine, and Tamarack grow right down to the water’s edge and communication services are sketchy.

The idea is to fish for perch while we are here. I will post when and if I can.

Cheers!

—Mitchell Hegman

Stovetop Art

Cooking is one thing; preparing fine cuisine is something else entirely.

It’s art.

By that measure, Desiree is an artist. Day after day, she creates fine meals and serves them with a sense of presentation. Even the preparations carry an artistry of their own—onions and garlic diced to uniform size, a sprig of color here, a dash of spice there, stirring with grace rather than abandon.

Yesterday, while making fried rice, she set about pan-frying sausage, garlic, and onions. Each demands its own balance of heat and time. Yet with one pan on a single burner, she handled it with ease—lightly searing the sausage first, then sliding the pan just so to divide the burner into zones of heat.

Simple, effective, and unexpectedly beautiful.

“I like the look of that,” I told her as she worked the pan, and I reached for my phone to capture the moment.

Desiree’s Stovetop Artwork

—Mitchell Hegman

Shooting Cattle

I’ve taken to shooting my neighbor’s cattle.

Don’t press the panic button just yet. I’m not using my hunting rifle. I’m shooting them with my Red Ryder BB rifle, and the BBs bounce right off the cattle without harm. But the landed shots annoy them enough that they move on. I also tell the cattle I don’t like them while carefully placing shots.

“And stay away,” I yell after the cattle when they finally rumble off.

The idea here, plainly enough, is to keep these coarse, poop-as-they-go invaders a fair distance from my good stuff. Cattle, in addition to grazing greenery down to nubs, are destructive in their oafishness. They stomp too hard when plodding around. They rub and lean against most anything upright. And then we have the cowpies.

I’ll admit, I probably enjoy shooting cattle more than I should. It’s far more satisfying than peppering cans and bottles. Plus, I get a kick out of how the little ones sometimes let out a surprised “murp” when I land a good shot.

This is some official Montana living I’m doing right here.

Me and My Trusty Red Ryder BB Rifle

Drawing Down on Cattle at My Solar PV Array

—Mitchell Hegman

Sun Sticks

Two conversions have taken place here at what I’m now calling the Hegman Ungulate Animal Resort. The first, mentioned in a blog just a couple of days ago, came courtesy of a marauding herd of longhorn cattle. Over the weekend, they plodded into the yard and transformed broad patches of native grass into random displays of squishy cowpies.

Not exactly an improvement.

Today’s conversion brought us “sun sticks.”

Yesterday, a group of deer pranced into the yard and neatly nipped the flowerheads off a line of sunflowers at the front drive—leaving behind a stand of sun sticks.

Whether this qualifies as any kind of upgrade is still up for debate, though it seems unlikely.

I’ll spare you the cowpie photos, but here’s a look at one of our new sun sticks.

A Sun Stick

—Mitchell Hegman

The Long Trail

The cover for my hot tub measures a bit over six feet across. That may not strike some of us as a particularly great distance to cross, but distance is relative. If you’re a ¼-inch-long moth, that’s a pretty substantial jaunt. If early-morning dew has collected on the cover, it’s downright treacherous.

Starting in late spring and stretching through the fall, dew gathered on the hot tub becomes a death trap for all manner of moths and no-name whizbots. On some dewy mornings, I will find dozens of insects helplessly stuck in place on the cover, their wings pinned tight by the surface tension of the water.

Having been tainted by some sort of moron gene, I often try to save the insects by tabbing them up with my finger and depositing them on my brick ledge. I have my reasons. My cover folds back on itself when I open it. If I did this with the insects stuck in place, I would squash them.

Some mornings I find moths with trails behind them where they dragged themselves forward across the wet expanse.

Big efforts, those.

Noteworthy.

Yesterday, I found evidence of a single, wholly inspiring slog across the entire cover. And the moth had obviously escaped on the far side.

Great stuff, that.

I have posted photographic evidence of the great escape—including a Cold Smoke beer for proper scale.

The Long Trail

—Mitchell Hegman

Incidental Ranching

Montana is classified as “open range” territory. In the Western United States, open range is rangeland where cattle roam freely regardless of land ownership. When governed by "open range" laws, those wanting to keep animals off their property must erect a fence to keep animals out. This applies to public roads as well.

Plainly enough, this applies to both of our properties.

Over the weekend, while we were at the cabin, my neighbor’s cattle plowed through their haphazard fence and took up temporary residence on our property. We came home to find our drive and yard looking rather frazzled from grazing and littered with cow pies. The cattle, by then, had been pushed back onto their proper grazing land.

I shoveled up and carted off the most egregious pies and watered down the rest. Incidental ranching is a lot of work, but not particularly rewarding. I’ve posted a photograph of the longhorns at my drive—sent to me by a friend who happened to catch them there.

Cattle at the Drive

—Mitchell Hegman