My Coffee Maker has Gone Soft

The coffee maker at my cabin is unusual.  For starters, it is white in color.   Additionally, this coffee maker lacks a hot plate.  Instead of using a hot plate to keep the coffee warm, the carafe is also white and well insulated.

Back to that in a bit.

Upon waking in the mountain darkness this morning, I wobbled out from my bedroom to start coffee brewing.  I rubbed at my eyes the whole time.   As always, I prepped everything last night so a simple press of the on/off button would begin the brewing process.

I had in mind I might go back to bed and wait until the coffee finished before assaulting my day.

When I reached the rolling island upon which the coffee maker presently stands, I reached out in the darkness and tried to tap the coffee maker's onboard switch.

What the…?

Overnight, my coffee maker had gone soft!  Pillow soft.  Soft as a marshmallow.

I poked at it twice.

For an instant a kind of righteous fear gripped me.  Had I finally fallen into an alternate universe as I suspected I someday would?  Did solid now have a new definition?

I strained my eyes to see the coffee maker.  Two white objects stood there side by side.

A double universe then?

I quickly backtracked to a bank of light switches and flicked on all three of them.

A wash of light fell across everything.

Ahhhh.

My bad.

I was trying to switch on an upright roll of paper towels.

—Mitchell Hegman

Summer Rainstorm

Look at us now.  Battered by squalls we stand rigid in our valley.  Clouds tumble black over tourmaline above us.  The highest mountains have crawled away from around us, surely they have, and rain drives hard into this summer’s ginger grasses.  The once open and rolling expanse now obscured by curtains of rain.  But the reward, the reward for this sparsely peopled land, once the storm recedes, will be the prancing green of freshened sage, the newest bird chanting, and pine and stone mountains gathering us up once again.

—Mitchell Hegman

From a Distance

From a distance, sorrow appears as a disheveled old man parting tall weeds to find a dog he lost many years ago.  But as you get nearer, you find a younger man dancing with the ghost of a young woman.

—Mitchell Hegman

Scenes from a Mountain

Posted today are a few photographs from a day spent climbing a very steep mountainside.

The Bottom

The Steep

The Berries

—Mitchell Hegman

Bucket List for 2019

1. Make friends with the chipmunk constantly flinging itself across the deck at my cabin.

2. Teach the rest of the world to spell nooodles with an extra “o” just for fun.

3. Invent a scented spray that, when misted across loud and blustering people, turns them into a potted begonia plants with pink plastic bells dangling from the stem of each leaf.

4. Find a dime and a couple quarters in the cushions of my sofa (the same way I did as a kid).

5. Clean under my refrigerator.

6. Travel to Plains, Montana again.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Great Gig the Sky

Though most of you have probably not heard the name Clare Torry, you have likely heard her voice.  Clare, was a songwriter and session vocalist during the 1970s.  She sometimes worked at Abby Road Studios.

Back in 1973, the progressive rock band Pink Floyd recorded songs in Abby Road Studios.  One of the songs they recorded grew from a chord progression played by keyboardist Richard Wright.  The progression was known as “The Mortality Sequence” or was sometimes called “The Religion Song.”  

In the year previous, the song had been performed live as an organ instrumental accompanied by spoken word samples from the Bible.  A change in the song’s tittle and a switch from organ to piano landed the song on the recording playlist for the album The Dark Side of the Moon.  After attempts at layering recordings of various sound effects overtop the music—including recordings of NASA astronauts—the dissatisfied band suggested having a female singer simply “wail” overtop the track.

Album sound engineer Alan Parsons suggested, as you might now imagine, a young woman named Clare Torry might be a perfect choice for her voice.

Clare was brought into the studio.  The band played the instrumental track for her and then asked her extemporize vocals for it.  Clare found herself somewhat flustered at first.  With no lyrics to sing, she lacked a proper path.

After some false starts and a little thought, Clare decided she would simply use her voice as if it were another instrument lending itself to the track.  She performed two full takes, and then stopped halfway through a third, convinced she had done the best she could on the second cut.

Though the members of Pink Floyd were very pleased with what she had done, she left the studio thinking her work would end up rejected in the final cut.

The song, with her vocals included, is one of my favorites of all time.  I have listened to this song countless times.  Clare Torry’s voice slices into my very soul at points.

Posted below is a video recording of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” the song Clare lent her voice to in 1973.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVBCE3gaNxc

Aster and Fairy Bells

Arctic Aster

Posted today are a couple photographs of flowers I captured on an afternoon walk near my cabin.  I am certain the first flower is an aster.  In looking through all of my books on flowers and searching online, I think the flower is, specifically, an Arctic aster.

The Arctic aster ranges from the Yukon in the north down to Colorado.  This plant is willing to grow in dry and rocky soils.

Some tribes used the roots, stems, and flower to produce a tea for the treatment of backaches.  The tea was taken while sitting in a steam bath.

Rough-Fruited Fairy Bells

A member of the lily family, rough-fruited fairy bells enjoy a wide range.  In the western half of North America, they flourish from British Columbia down to Arizona and New Mexico.  They favor rich, moist soils in forested areas. 

Rough-fruited fairy bells blossom and produce their berries in pairs.  The fruit, though (in my mind) suspiciously colored, are edible and said to be bland to mildly sweet.

I have not yet tasted one of the berries.

The Blackfoot people used the berries to treat snow-blindness.  They did this by inserting the seeds from plant under the eyelids for the night.

—Mitchell Hegman

Poorly Folded Sweater

While descending along a twisting highway in the forest, I drove past some kind of furry animal someone had struck and killed with their automobile.  The animal lay just off the highway on an embankment of grass and gravel.   Not a small animal.  Not big either.

Likely a baby animal.  Maybe a deer.

The hapless animal looked like a heavy brown sweater someone had carelessly flung from their shoulders as they walked off in a fit of rage.  One sleeve bent off to the side at a wholly wrong angle.  The rest of the sweater lay folded poorly.  A heap of rumples.

But not a sweater.

For the rest of the day, the scene came back to me at unexpected times, leaving me uncomfortable.  The image of the crumpled thing fading in my rearview mirror repeating inside my head.

Such roadside reminders of demise have bothered me since childhood.  These are not public service announcements.  They are reality—all too common and grim.

For the whole day, I repeatedly shook free the sweater and flung it away from me.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Kind of Sky I Like

I like a sky that’s not afraid to be blue.  Deep blue.  A sky that remembers how to treat mountains (in other words, defers to them), and one willing to accommodate more than one kind of bird in flight at the same time.

—Mitchell Hegman

Considering All Angles

Sometimes, we neglect to consider all angles.

Have we, for example, considered that a small population of men who cannot properly pronounce “aluminum” permanently resides in Auckland, New Zealand?

Have we taken into account that scientists have now figured out a way to link electronic circuitry with living cells?

That America has become a throw-away society?

That silk is made by worms?

That many societies around the world have legislated almost all sexual activity into forms of illegality?

That gerbils will kill and eat their own babies?

Maybe, at some point, one or all of these things will matter.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Gallon of Huckleberries in an Hour

I am a reasonably efficient huckleberry picker.  When I strike a good patch, I get pretty busy.

“Let’s get after them,” I will call out to anyone picking with me.  “These berries are not going to pick themselves.”

Now the mystery.  I and all my normal huckleberry picking partners constantly hear other people bragging about a somewhere patch on somewhere mountain where they pick a gallon of huckleberries in an hour.

I am sure such a mark can be reached on occasion, but neither I nor my normal berry-picking buddies have ever achieved the legendary gallon of berries in an hour.  And I have been picking berries regularly for most of my adult life.

A few years back, I took time to calculate how many berries are required to make a gallon—based on the normal mix of huckleberries we find in our neck of the woods.  The answer: 6,400 berries.  That’s 106.6 berries per minute.  Meaning 1.7 berries per second.

Considering, we pick them one at a time, that’s a lot of berries.   You could do better with consistently bigger berries.  But we simply don’t have them in our adjacent mountains.

Yesterday, I figured out how to meet that legendary gallon-an-hour mark.

“What time is it?” I asked one of my buddies across a decent patch we struck early on our arrival in the mountains.

“Eleven-thirty.”

I flicked out a berry-purpled thumb and two fingers, calculating.  “So,” I said, “That means we have been picking for almost three hours.”  I peered inside my gallon berry bucket.  “I have about three-quarters of a gallon.  That’s a gallon an hour!”

—Mitchell Hegman

Bleak

I wake after only four scant hours of sleep.  The inside of my mouth tastes like the smell of a deer eviscerated by the blunt trauma of a speeding big-rig.

My grandparents are dead.

My parents.

A hole lies beside me where once lay a woman.

I am, therefore, incomplete.

Or complete?

Which?

The night is blue.  Deep blue.  The very color of a blueberry.  And cold in the same firm way.

I have been thinking about death again.

Death seems like a pretty bleak reward for living, if you ask me.

If I had my way, ice-cream cones and a noteworthy poem or two about us would be our reward at the end of our days.  And maybe Dad and Grandmother would not have been so afraid of the end if that were so. 

—Mitchell Hegman

Journal Entry: January 20, 2000 (Lunar Eclipse)

I stood outside in the cold snow below migrant clouds scissoring random stars from the broad dome of night so I could watch the shadow of our blue planet eclipse the Moon.  Our shadow swallowed the luminary whole, albeit scrupulously.  No malice.  No turning aside.  The Moon vanished as if a shiny coin dropped inside a black purse.  Nearby, unconcerned, Orion lounged half-aslant, as if reclining with one elbow against a sofa.  This, I thought, is the way in which all new centuries, all new millennia should begin.

Once the last sliver of Moon withdrew, questions fell upon me.   What is the meaning of me?  Why am I here, in particular, to witness this?  Why are we cruel as children and mature men, but soft in-between?  Why must the order that sends all things marching be that of decline?  Where goes the light that escapes beyond our reach?  Why do the coyotes cry from the soft hills?  And on.

Something ancient and grand accessed me as I stood out in the imposed darkness.  Not any profound understanding of place and time.  Not an epiphany come religious.  Just a sense of certainty that I am at least a speck of something big: a blade of grass, upright, splitting the wind, a stone to shape the flow a spring’s water.  In the absence of moonlight, the smaller luminaries grew brighter.  To the west, the lights in the city of Helena came full, enkindling a warm and golden secondary glow in the low clouds easing down from the mountains.  The coyotes fell silent.  All things marshaled together in just one moment of awe.  All things caught up in these celestial clockworks.  The sun going this way.  The Moon going there.  Our small planet stuck in the center.  Our own atoms swashbuckling just below the skin.  Yet...all singular in experience for a moment.

Clouds crossed over.  The Moon slowly sliced a bright slit in the darkness above, emerging from the far side of shadow.  The moment gone.  The darkness of night never quite solid.  The attentive stars pinpricked at me as I trudged back inside my house to resume normal life.

—Mitchell Hegman

Alternate Interpretations of Dreams

In a general sense, dreaming of fish is thought to connote good fortune.  Dreaming about fish swishing through clear water might mean a nice surprise awaits you in the near future.  Dreaming about cooking fish might indicate something is about to sour in your life.

But what if alternate interpretations might apply?   What if dreaming of trout swimming through your house means you are about to drop out of your present life and move to Dolly Parton’s Dollywood to juggle flaming potatoes in a nightly show?

If this is so, one of us need s to worry a bit.

—Mitchell Hegman

Avocado Hand

Avocados are dangerous.  Far more dangerous than tomatoes or onions.  For several years, especially since the NAFTA trade agreement flooded the U.S. with an abundant supply of avocados, injuries have been on the rise. 

Last year, here in the U.S., 24 people per day were rushed to the ER for something emergency physicians have termed “avocado hand.”  In other words, injuries caused while cutting avocados.  People accidentally stabbing their palms.  Cutting their fingers.  Cutting their buddy’s fingers.  Perhaps, attempting to juggle paring knives before going to work.

Some folks are seriously maiming themselves.  Furthermore, avocado hand is rapidly becoming a more widespread phenomenon.   In Britain, one plastic surgeon, Simon Eccles, sees an average of 4 patients each week suffering from avocado hand.

Most injuries occur when people attempt to remove the pit or peel.  

Admittedly, an avocado is not near as scary as, say, a black widow spider, but then, we are usually not chasing after spiders with knives.

—Mitchell Hegman

Early Morning

I woke earlier than normal today.

An hour before dawn, I went outside and slipped into my hot tub to soak under the spread of stars.  Naturally, I closed my eyes and allowed my brain to latch a few more relays and clean some contact points at its favored pace.

All good.

Until I opened my eyes again.

When I opened my eyes, I swore I saw a bunch of really small people scattering across the surface of the water in my hot tub and whisking away in curls of steam.

Just wondering…is anyone else out there seeing this?

—Mitchell Hegman

Crazy Talk

I have learned how to greatly annoy my 20 pounds of housecat first thing every morning.  It’s surprisingly easy to do.  What I do is make him talk to me before feeding him.

He tends to meow a lot when I first get up, and will do so until I feed him.  These days, I force him into “conversations” that go something like this:

ME: “Are you hungry, boy?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME: “I mean for food.  Are you hungry for food?  Is that what you are hungry for?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME: “Would you like me to get some out of the cupboard?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME: “Do you want to watch me open the cupboard?

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME (Opening the cupboard): “Do you see a can you like?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME (Pointing at a can): “This one?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME (Pointing at another can): “This one?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME (Pointing at a third can): “This one?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME (Grabbing a can): “Would you like me to open the can?”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

ME: “Fine.  Follow me into the laundry room.  I have a few more questions for you.”

20 Pounds of Cat: “Meow.”

Off we go to his food dish—the cat trotting out in front of me.

I will spare you the rest of our “conversation” for fear of driving you as crazy as my cat.  But, on a good day, we talk quite a bit more before I scoop food into his dish.

—Mitchell Hegman

Concrete Crews

Sometimes, during these warm summer days, I miss wandering around constructions sites as I did for so many years.  They were entertaining.

I thought about this yesterday as I drove by a concrete crew forming walls for a foundation pour.

Concrete crews were a particular favorite.  They were often more a collision than a crew…the sort of collision where the foreman was a sports car streaking down the highway and the inexperienced summer help were hapless butterflies lingering near the centerline one second too long.

I miss that.

—Mitchell Hegman

Note: Tad, does this sound like you?

Name

Emma crushed the petals of wood roses and the skin of tomatoes into a paste.  She shook the dried bells of flax and collected the fine black seeds in her palm.  She gathered yellow pollen in a small jar.

Using braided grass as a brush, Emma painted her name in paste on a flat grey stone.  Not in flowing or flourishing style.

“EMMA” in simple block letters.

She sprinkled flax seed and pollen over the sticky letters and brushed away the excess.

Emma did not love her name.  Rather, she felt reduced by it.  Caged.

Emma carried the stone to the crest of a hill and placed it where rains would gradually wash way the letters when storms arrived and she walked away with yellow fingers and a strange satisfaction.

—Mitchell Hegman

Critical Thought

Where many people reach their peak of critical thought where they finally decide for themselves they either reside in a godless world where nothing matters, or one in which a god exists and is nudging both the stars above and the traffic pouring down along I-15, I wonder about much more.

For example, would a god enjoy shrimp for lunch?

Whence came such a god?

Is it plausible that a god might be a “male” figure as we see maleness, and, if so, might he have a hot-looking younger sister?

—Mitchell Hegman

Horsefly Creek

Horsefly Creek spills down through the next valley over from my cabin.  My creek, Hogum, and Horsefly share opposite flanks of the same mountains.  This means—in the sparest terms—my cabin is something between two and three miles from the Horsefly Fire presently burning through dense beetle-kill timber.

I have been staying at my cabin all alone for the last two days and nights, living alongside the fire.  During daylight hours, I hear chainsaws crying against distant trees.  I hear helicopters thumping across the Continental Divide, flying in from prairie staging areas at the feet of the mountains on the east slopes.  Occasionally, I hear bulldozers clanking and echoing, echoing, echoing through the array of finger-ridges and thick stands of timber.

The fire has, except for one storm-filled night, clawed in the opposite direction from my cabin.  An estimated 1,350 acres have been ravaged thus far.  Some 532 people were enlisted to fight the fire due to the proximity of so many houses and cabins in the direction of fire travel.

Thankfully, the fire was listed at 45% contained as of last night and the people evacuated on the east side of the fire were allowed to return home.  A few hours before darkness collapsed across my valley, a long soaking rain descended on the mountains.

For the last two days I have been a little lonely.  Though I have busied myself with carpentry and electrical work, I am feeling particularly isolated.  Singular.  And my narrow valley has remained eerily calm in the mornings and evenings.  Too quiet.  Something-obviously-wrong-but-beautiful quiet.

Surprisingly, smoke has not invaded my space.  Sandhill cranes have been calling from the meadows above me.  Hummingbirds have whizzed by my head.  Deer have casually strolled alongside me.

This morning, I will pack up and leave.  The Horsefly Fire is now laying down, shrinking within the perimeters of fire lines.  Not certain what I might have done (other than flee) if the fire invaded, but it seems I no longer have to worry. 

Posted are a couple photographs from my lonely, yet green, mountain valley.

August Wildflowers

Hogum Creek

—Mitchell Hegman

Where the Tracks End

For some inexplicable reason, I got to thinking about one winter morning, years ago, when I left my house in the predawn darkness and drove through several inches of freshly fallen snow.  The snow on the country road lay smooth and without a track of any kind under my headlight beams.

Just as I began climbing a long hill, a small set of tracks hooked into the very center of the road from someplace in the darkened junipers alongside the road.

Little blue holes in the snow, those.

I supposed the tracks to be from a chipmunk or squirrel or some other such diminutive creature and I followed the tracks down the very center of the road.  The tracks carried on, straight as the edge of a piece of paper, once they struck the road.  Intrigued by the tracks, I tried to keep them between the beams of my headlights as I drove.

Suddenly the tracks stopped.  Just plain stopped.

No turn to the right.

No turn to the left.

Not a single step back.

No critter in sight.

Had the thing evaporated in mid-step?  Had it suddenly dropped into a black hole?  Had the cloudy night itself plucked up the hapless critter?   I have seen a similar thing when a bird snatches something up from the snow, but this always leave impressions of wings or some other sign of a tragic or unscripted end.

What here?

I drove overtop the place where the tracks stopped.  On into the cobalt darkness.  I felt a little shaken, really.   New, smooth snow sparkled and danced electric under my wash of lights as I swept on.

I glanced in my rearview mirror.  Just my tracks.  My tracks fading white to blue against the blue-black night.

Just that.

And me at the end of those tracks…trotting on to my own uncertain end.

—Mitchell Hegman

Down at the Lake

Sitting down at the lakeshore watching my underground sprinkler system chik-chikking arcs of water out across my small patch of lawn is strangely satisfying for me.

Zen-like.

I particularly enjoy when the spray of two sprinklers swipe across each other.

We are working together down here.

I similarly enjoy finding a single ant and following it as far as I can before my stupid human size smooshes me hard against a wall or the ant’s path corners me amid impassible flourishes of juniper and sagebrush.

Having watched a half-dozen wake-boats slogging by—loaded down with obnoxious people—I have decided that women wearing long summer dresses are more alluring than women in bikinis.

Finally, I think I have a beer in the refrigerator down here.  That must be worth something.

—Mitchell Hegman

Question

Would it be appropriate to call a carpenter busy at work installing a new kitchen countertop counterproductive?

—Mitchell Hegman

Button

Sometimes, I wish there existed a button that would, upon being pressed, instantly turn dogs that never stop yapping into cats.

I would press that button every few days.

—Mitchell Hegman