The Price of Huckleberries

Yesterday, I spent the better part of eight hours clawing my way up and down steep inclines.  I crawled over and under deadfall.  At times, I literally swam through heavy brush.  All of this time, I had a bucket and a can of bear spray attached to my belt.

I was in known grizzly country.

Several times, I slipped on growths of beargrass and fell on my butt.

In the end, I came home with something a bit under two gallons of huckleberries.

Whatever the going price is for fresh huckleberries, it’s not near enough.

Finally, I can’t think of anything I would rather do for eight hours.

--Mitchell Hegman

Robbers

Honey, let’s wear our early retirement on the inside and pretend we are robbers.

We could use the excitement.

Let’s pretend thievery next time we go to the grocery.

You can snip some green carrot tops and bury them in your purse.

Maybe I can thumb free the little nubs from the top of avocados and slip them into my pocket.

Ours is that kind of desperation.

--Mitchell Hegman

Birdsong Elk

Yesterday, on an early morning drive to my cabin, I saw the largest herd of elk I have ever seen.  I would estimate the herd numbered over two hundred animals.  After glimpsing the elk in a meadow as I drove along the highway, I pulled my truck over and then threaded my way though some thick brush on foot for a closer look.

I managed to sneak to within something just a bit over a stone throw from the elk and stood there in a thicket of stick willow watching and listening.

That’s the thing: listening.

Elk cows and calves chirp, whistle, and mew—sounding birds more than anything.  The meadow was filled with birdsong as I watched. 

I stood there for several minutes, taking in the sights and sounds.

Before I left the elk herd, I managed the photographs posted below.  I have also posted a YouTube video featuring elk chirping and singing.

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NKeP2118fM

First

The man who clings to all his gold will be first to drown when the water rises.

--Mitchell Hegman

Full Traffic Stop

All vehicles came to a stop at 7:15 am.  By all vehicles, I mean one truck and two compact cars over the course of about two minutes.  I and my three traveling companions got out of the truck to assess.

Nothing had happened yet, but something was about to.

Instinctively, I reached for my smarter-than-me-phone and punched up my camera app.

Usually, traffic jams peeve me.  Not this time.

I watched with great pleasure as six fully-antlered bull elk, in single file, jumped a nearby fence, pranced across the highway, jumped a fence on the opposite side of the road, and scrambled for some timbered hills.

The camera on my phone suffers in low light conditions and suffers when zoomed, but I did manage a couple of poor quality images.

--Mitchell Hegman

Hurtful Thinking

Idea to perpetually satisfy masochists: tattoos done in invisible ink.

--Mitchell Hegman

Before and After

My thoughts before my first cup of coffee this morning: Garble, garble, junk.  SHUT UP CAT!  Garble, junk.

My first thought after coffee: Those who avoid failure also avoid success in doing so.

 --Mitchell Hegman

Early Riser

I woke a little after four this morning to wind jostling blinds at my open windows.

Wind has a presence.  That presence came through the open windows and stood there beside my bed, nudging at my bare shoulder.

Unable to fall back to sleep, I slipped into my robe and wobbled outside to stand on my back deck. 

Stars yet glimmered above me.  But all along mountainous horizon to the north and east, first light had scrubbed clean the stars and left behind an empty gray slate.

Half of the Big Dipper was gone.

It is said that one day the Sun will grow huge.  On that day, the Earth will open like a book and light will scour it clean of all that is not essential. 

Early risers will be first to go.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Smallest Dancer

Posted is a photograph I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone at a wedding on the 14^th of this month.  I smile every time I see it.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Dead South

Posted is a video by The Dead South.  Somehow, this band manages to make the banjo sound fresh in this song.  Something about this song satisfies the rock-and-roller in me. I really like a lot of their stuff.

Enjoy!

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FzVhw8_bY

Eleven Years Ago

While looking through some files of old photographs, I came across several images I captured of the Meriwether Fire experiencing a blow up.  The fire started in July of 2007 and raged into August—eventually scorching some 46,300 acres of land.

The last two photographs include my house in the foreground.

If you live here, you live with fire.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sprinkler System

Here on the leeward side of the Rocky Mountain Front, we reside in something of a rain shadow.  Robbed of their moisture as they stagger through the mountains to our west, clouds have little rain or snow left to offer by the time they reach us.  A normal year will see us capturing only about twelve inches of rain.

If you want a green lawn throughout the summer, you will need to drag a sprinkler around the place or install a more formal sprinkler system.

Somewhere around forty years ago, Leo, my neighbor on the lake, decided he wanted a little patch of green lawn.  He started modestly—watering only a small patch around his cabin—but over the years decided to bring green to something near an acre of rumpled land climbing uphill from his lakefront.

Green takes a lot.  Hundreds of feet of underground piping.  Hundreds of feet of spaghetti-style hoses above ground.  Dozens of sprinklers of every design.

To maintain green this time of year, sprinklers need to chick-chick above the lawn every other day at a minimum.

Leo’s system is not automatic.  Moreover, the system was created in piecemeal fashion.  It’s a complex compendium of pipes teeing off pipes, valves that must be opened or closed, aboveground pipes going underground, pipes vanishing in untended sections of landscape and appearing again under trees many yards in the distance. 

Yesterday, I helped water Leo’s yard and garden, which is now under the care of his son, Kevin.  “How do I turn on the sprinklers for the garden,” I asked him.

“The best thing is to follow the hose down from the sprinkler and open whatever valve you find connected to it.  Then you can start the pump down by the lake.”

Suffice it to say I wandered around the yard for the better part of a half-hour working to get the sprinklers I wanted spraying with sufficient pressure.  After following ten or so hoses and pipes, dashing through unintended sprays of water, cranking eight or nine valves in one direction or another, and dragging one sprinkler into the appropriate spot, I got the sprinkler system to do as I wanted.

This morning, I am heading down to do the same. I have my hiking shoes on. 

--Mitchell Hegman

One Earthworm to Another

Earthworm #1:  “I hear you are expecting little ones.”

Earthworm #2:  “Yes.  I am very excited.”

Earthworm #1:  “What are your hopes and expectations for them?”

Earthworm #2:  “Oh, I have not thought that far ahead.  I will just be happy if they are born without legs and arms and are otherwise healthy.”

--Mitchell Hegman

The Evolution Scale

I watched the World news the other day.  I followed with a program trying to track the advance of early Homo sapiens through existing fossil evidence.

I got a little confused.

I am beginning to think scientists have been looking at the wrong end of the scale here.  I am not sure we descended from ape-like creatures as much as we appear to be descending into them.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Swarm of One

William Clark, in writing his journals as the Corps of Discovery explored the West along the wending course of the Missouri River, came up with at least nineteen variations for the spelling of “mosquito.” 

My favorite: mesquestors.

Members of the Lewis Clark Expedition wrote extensively about how mosquitoes harassed them.  Some historians have suggested chronic malaria, a disease vectored by the little pests, may have been part of what led to Captain Meriwether Lewis’s death—a suspected suicide—in 1809.

Here is the thing.  I totally understand how the Corps of Discovery felt about mesquestors.  A swarm of one invaded my house last night and I have been slapping myself silly trying to stop its relentless attacks on me ever since. 

The little bugger almost continuously zizzes around my ears.  I don’t know how many times the mosqueetoe has attempted to drill into my forearms, legs, and cheek.  At present, I am sitting in front of a fan, which produces a wall of air currents the insect cannot penetrate.

My plan is simply to outlast the little bastard.  As soon as that girl gets up and gets dressed for the day, I plan on running out to the car and driving away.      

--Mitchell Hegman

Where the Stagecoach Still Arrives on Time

We took the long way home from the Ruby Valley and spent some time in Virginia City.  Virginia City is a living ghost town which still boasts a population of just under 200 people.  The boomtown of Virginia City also served for a time as the territorial capital of Montana (along with Bannack) during the gold rush years following the gold strike on Alder Creek in 1863.

During the summer months, the small town booms once more.  History comes alive, and the stagecoach arrives on time.

--Mitchell Hegman

Checklist

I woke at 7:00 AM inside a sleeping room in Twin Bridges, Montana.

Rubbing at my aching forehead, I ran through a mental checklist:

Attended a Ruby Valley wedding surrounded by seven mountain ranges: Check

Drank a glass of Scotch and two glasses of wine: Check

Bumped into a high school classmate: Check

Drank two more glasses of wine and one more Scotch: Check

Barn-danced with that girl: Check

Drank more something-or-others: Check

Walked outside in starry darkness: Check

Drank a shot (according to that girl) of something: Check

Danced with any girl appearing in front of me: Check

Celebrated with champagne: Check

Got an Uberish ride of some sort back to our room with sister, brother-in-law, that girl, some bearded dude from Alder, a mason jar filled with dried wheat stalks and a woman of questionable origins: Check

Landed in bed with the bed spins: Check

Got out of bed and hugged the toilet: Check

First hangover in well over twenty years: Check

Had a great time: Check

--Mitchell Hegman

20 Pounds of Sunrise

Before sunrise this morning, I sat inside my darkened house petting my 20 pounds of housecat.  Early in the morning is the only sure time he allows for such lavish affection.  He especially enjoys when I gently knead at is fancy perfume-bottle shaped skull.

Even with the windows of my house flung wide open, the air inside remained perfectly still.  Nothing outside stirred.

I reflected on my life.

I have always been surrounded by profoundly blue mountains, which is important.  I had a grandfather with a crooked arm but a kind heart.  I once owned a car for less than eight hours before totaling it in a head-on collision.  Twice in my life I have nibbled sweets that tasted exactly the way a rose smells.  I kissed the pretty girls.  I once drove my young daughter thirty miles just to show her an osprey nest.  I drove away slowly from my first life, but came back in a hurry.

At sunrise, I followed my cat outside.

For the first hour we worship the sun.

--Mitchell Hegman

Pretty Rocks

When I was kid, all I needed to be happy was a pile of pretty rocks.  I would spend the whole day quarrying through the rocks looking for the prettiest ones.

Now that I am retired and living smack on the diuvial fan at the edge of the Prickly Pear Valley, I am once again happy to spend my days browsing for the beautiful rocks swept down from the surrounding mountains. 

I have even fired up two rock tumblers to clean and refine my finds.

Posted is a photograph of a few rocks I recently found on my property.

--Mitchell Hegman

20 Pounds of Bill the Cat

I wrote a few days back about how my cat’s fur has been collecting seeds and burs from the now (marginally evil) ripening grasses and forbs around our house.

That’s only part of the story.

During the warm summer months, my 20 pounds of housecat fancies himself more the outdoor variety.   He spends most of his days and nights outside. Usually, you can find him hiding somewhat fearfully under my deck.

He has all the makings of an outdoor cat. 

He’s big (actually, fat).

He still has claws (from which he mostly sheds claw sheaths on my sofa).

He’s fast (at running inside when he hears an errant sound).

But mostly, he’s starting to look awful.  I think he has designs on becoming Bill the Cat from the comic strip Bloom County.

Bill the Cat (created by Berkeley Breathed, portrayed by John Byner)

--Mitchell Hegman

Be the Butterfly

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

—Rabondranath Tagore

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

—Richard Bach

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.

—Joseph Conrad

Demons and Angels

One night, while he slept, six black demons visited Micah.  The angels shouted at him using a hurried language he could not understand.   They tore off his arms.  They set scorpions free on his bed and then pressed their blackness into him.

Micah woke at the softest shoulder of morning.  Five tall, white angels surrounded his bed.  They sang the birthday song.  At the end of the song, the angels began clapping.

“If you clap,” one of the angels lilted, “we shall set you free.”

Tail curled, a scorpion suddenly flitted across Micah’s chest.  Just then, something Micah’s grandmother used to say came to Micah.  “The devil,” she would say, “is in the details.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Bad Candy

The Jelly Belly Candy Company has dropped two new jelly bean flavors into their mix: dirty dishwater and stink bug.

They taste perfectly awful, which makes them a sure winner.

The bad-tasting beans are part of something called the BeanBoozled game, which pairs sweeter beans with bad ones.  If you are lucky, you only grab the sweet jelly beans when you play the game and try to sate your sweet tooth.

Here are few example pairings:

1. Spoiled Milk and Coconut

2. Dead Fish and Strawberry

3. Stinky Socks and Tutti-Frutti

4. Lawn Clippings and Lime

5. Canned Dog Food and Chocolate Pudding

6. Barf and Peach

Here's the thing.  I didn’t attend college when I finished high school.  I didn’t see a clear career path there.  Had I known college might lead to job where I could design stinky sock flavored candy, I would have been in college before week’s end.

--Mitchell Hegman

Fame (Possibilities)

To my knowledge, there is neither a Ben Franklin nor a Sacagawea in my lineage.  I’ve descended from more common stock.  But in looking at the motley bunch that is mine, I can imagine a few near-famous things my ancestors might have been responsible for:          

—I can conceive that one of my distant relatives invented drunk driving.

—Maybe a great, great, great, great, great (not-so-great) grandfather of mine was the reason for inventing handcuffs.

—Possibly, there is a houseplant hypnotist in the mix.

—Invisible ink?

--Mitchell Hegman

Monument Plant (Green Gentian)

Monument plants are distributed widely across the Continental United States.  Given that, you might think they would shun higher elevations.  On a mountain drive the other day, however, I found many dozens of them growing in solitary fashion at elevations above 7000 feet.  Some of the plants were two feet tall and in full bloom.

Posted are two photographs I captured of the flowers.

--Mitchell Hegman

Bathrobe Incident

First thing this morning, in the half-light of dawn, I had a bathrobe incident.  In the event you would like to try this for yourself, here are five easy steps for doing so:

1. Partially open bathroom door.

2. Lean around door and grasp bathrobe hanging on back of door.

3. Pull bathrobe toward you.

4. Hook bathrobe on door lever handle

5. Briskly pull door into face.

--Mitchell Hegman

20 Pounds of Seed Collector

This time of year, my 20 pounds of housecat becomes a collector of seeds.  As he slinks downslope from my house through invasive swaths of cheatgrass, through needle-and-thread grass, through foxtails, and through bur-bearing forbs; the various barbs and hooks of maturing seeds affix themselves to his Velcro coat of fur.

After a long day of collecting seeds, he sleeps on my sofa.

Interesting side note: apparently my sofa is equipped with some sort of seed release mechanism, which releases the seeds from my cat’s coat.

--Mitchell Hegman

Marked Man

Sometimes, a song is powerful for being stripped down to the barest elements.  Forgo the guitars and the piano.  Leave behind all but a single voice.  Marked Man, performed by Mieka Pauly, is a song that does just that.

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpxMlG8boZ4

Weeds

Live life with the knowledge that the weeds you allow to thrive in your yard won’t stop at your fence.

--Mitchell Hegman

Hogback Mountain, 2018

Yesterday, that girl, her twin sisters, and I drove to the top of Hogback Mountain.  On top, we took in a view extending from the Flint Creek Range near Deer Lodge to the Bridger Range near Bozeman.  All of the Prickly Pear Valley and the chain of lakes along the Missouri River lay below us.

The wildflower displays on our climb from valley to mountaintop were spectacular.

We ended our day of adventure with a short hike into Refrigerator Canyon.  A strong, cool wind was funneling through the canyon.  Clear water clattered down through the boulders alongside us and sometimes filtered through the crushed limestone trail at our feet.

Following are a mix of photographs—some captured with my SLR camera, some captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

 

Larkspur atop Hogback.

A wildflower meadow.

The girls.

Flowers and limestone cliffs below.

Refrigerator Canyon.

--Mitchell Hegman