One Moment, Two Leaves

A chill wind unbound two of last year’s fallen linden leaves from the grass and sent them skittering across the drive, only to catch on the grass on the far side. Now they remain there, clutching one another. As witness to this, I am to find meaning, and I find none.

This has nothing to do with love, or worldly events, or the magpie that unfurled and sailed over at the same time. This is simply two leaves sent forth only to get stuck in a new place.

This is something that is nothing.

—Mitchell Hegman

Panic Mode

Some time ago, we established two truths. First, bacon is the duct tape of food. You can fix pretty much anything with it. Second, as my friend Gary suggested, it’s never too early to panic. Given that, let’s talk about my last shopping trip to Costco.

Costco carries a product I require on a regular basis: bacon bits, in particular 1.25 lb. bags of Kirkland Brand bacon crumbles. These are the Mona Lisa of bacon bits. We are talking pure art here.

And this is where the panic part comes in. On my last shopping excursion to Costco, I couldn’t find the crumbles. I made two rounds through the section of the store where I normally find them. As it now stands, I’m down to my last partial bag.

I don’t want to say I panicked in the all-in Scooby-Doo sense, but an argument could be made for something just a notch less than that.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Magnetic Storm

As a G4 geomagnetic storm unfurled curtains of aurora across the night skies north of us this week, a less visible drama was also underway. On Monday, Jan. 19, Earth felt the strongest solar radiation storm since 2003. From a sudden rupture on the sun, charged particles were hurled outward at near-relativistic speeds, crossing the 93-million-mile dark in minutes to under an hour. Some slipped through Earth’s magnetic guard, sliding along invisible lines toward the poles, where they vanished into the upper air, a reminder that we orbit not a lamp but a restless, convulsing star.

While these magnetic events can be disruptive to satellites and the power grid, they are also beautiful to behold, triggering a mad dance of colorful northern lights. Last night, we witnessed another display thanks to the geomagnetic storm. I missed the most intense colors by a minute or two, but managed an image of Desiree on the deck watching the storm. Please note, the strange object in the upper left is a wind sculpture hanging from the overhang of the house, not a UFO.

Desiree on the Deck

—Mitchell Hegman

Lake Ice

I should have titled this “Lack of Lake Ice,” considering present circumstances.

I have lived along Hauser Lake since 1991. In previous winters, ice typically sheathed over the entire lake surface sometime before Christmas. It arrived reliably, easing its way across the water until the lake settled entirely for the season.

Now, here we are having reached January 20, following weeks of abnormally warm weather, and a section of the lake remains open not far from my lakefront. It’s an unfinished thought, a dark patch that looks like it’s still deciding whether winter applies this year.

Canyon Ferry, Holter, and Lake Helena also feature open water. None of them seem quite ready to commit.

At the same time, frigid temperatures and brutal winter storms have charged in and overtaken the eastern half of the country. Winter, it seems, went east and performed with conviction. Out here, we are essentially upside-down in our weather, watching the season happen somewhere else.

Strange stuff.

I have posted a photograph of the lake just below my house.

Open Water on Hauser Lake

—Mitchell Hegman

Naked With Angry Bees

Desiree and I watched an episode of Naked and Afraid filmed on the island of Palawan, the same island in the Philippines we visited in 2024. It’s a stunningly beautiful place, but experiencing it naked rather puts a twist on things. To further add to the weirdity (my word), the pair of naked survivalists attacked a thriving beehive to steal honey.

Full disclosure: I would not attack a beehive fully clothed, even if I were second in line. But I will share a photo of the island where the beehive attack took place. Please note, the beautiful red speck on the beach is our Desiree. Finally, if you go there, wear your clothes.

Palawan Island

—Mitchell Hegman

The Order of Things

The order of things goes as follows: wake up, kiss wifey, plow through the day, kiss wifey, go to bed.

It’s difficult to tinker with this order. Plowing through the day and then waking up is impractical, if not potentially dangerous. If you go to sleep first, you can’t effectively kiss wifey. I don’t want to wake up and then straightaway plow through the day without kissing wifey.

But I think I can work with this: kiss wifey, kiss wifey, let the rest fall where they may.

—Mitchell Hegman

My Personal Wishlist for 2026

Following are a few modest things I want this year:

• I want to see somebody else named Mitch achieve worldwide fame, because we need more noteworthy Mitches.
• Bigger huckleberries.
• Give me one full month where I don’t either jam a finger, stub a toe, or bonk my head on something.
• If I have to cohabit with spiders, I want little, short-legged jumping spiders to replace all the creepy, all-legs-and-hair spiders in my house, because jumping spiders are as cute as arachnids get.
• Find a use for the roll of tar paper in my garage.
• I want to listen to Johnny Horton singing The Battle of New Orleans on an LP record while I watch the turntable spin, a stack of my Legos riding at its center, rotating along just as it did when I was seven or eight.
• See a change in internet query algorithms so Montana is not the first mention when I search for information on “aggressive house spiders.”
• Find an amendment in the governing rules that allows me to reach the end of a rainbow.
• Give me a morning when nothing needs fixing, explaining, adjusting, or improving, and everything is allowed to be exactly what it is.

—Mitchell Hegman