Fade Into You

Once in a great while, a cover song doesn’t just echo the original — it bends the light, reshaping it into something equally beautiful. That’s why I’ve collected three renditions of Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen’s immortal hymn — and two versions each of a half-dozen other songs. Today, I’ve shared a sparse but soothing rendition of Fade Into You, first written and recorded by Mazzy Star.

This song drifts and lulls. It lingers in the more thoughtful corners of my mind.

Take a moment. Let this song haunt you.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmh_WmcpCpo&list=RDBmh_WmcpCpo&start_radio=1

Sacred Duty

My house rests on the rim of a dry ravine. Ponderosa pines stand dominant on the scrubby slope below. These are hardy specimens. Ponderosas thrive where water runs sparse and winter comes at them with sharp elbows and knees. They’ve also developed a savvy way to resist wildfires. First, they shed low-hanging branches as they mature—allowing grass fires to race past rather than climbing into the tree. Additionally, their thick, puzzle-piece bark tends to flake away when exposed to flames, denying the fire a foothold

This time of year, ponderosas perform their most sacred duty: opening their cones and releasing seeds to propagate. Each seed comes attached to a close cousin of a helicopter blade. Brushed by a rush of wind, they pop free of the cone and twirl into the expanse.

The other morning, I found seeds scattered across my back deck—released from trees standing some 100 feet away.

Impressive.

I gathered a few and posed them with a Cold Smoke beer for scale. In the background, you can see the ponderosa trees themselves.

Seeds and Cold Smoke

Puzzle-Piece Bark

—Mitchell Hegman

A Functional Idiot

I’m not a recovering idiot. I’m more a full-on functional idiot. As proof, take a look at the two tubes I posted below. The tube featured on top is an ointment I apply to my skin if psoriasis flares. The other is toothpaste.

Note the caps. The ointment tube cap screws on at the small end. The toothpaste tube—as with most—screws down on the bigger, flared end. As a functional idiot, the ointment cap throws me off. Not just once in a while, but every time I replace the cap on the ointment, I try screwing on the wrong end first. You would think I might figure this out after a dozen or so times, but apparently, I’m committed to keeping the idiot part fully functional.

—Mitchell Hegman

A New House for Snowball

Let’s begin with this: Snowball is a cat. A coal-black cat. She is small in stature but solid in spirit, having spent eighteen years braving the Montana seasons on or near my neighbor Kevin’s porch. That’s a long journey for any outdoor feline, and though she carries a few scars of survival, she remains steady. Last winter, the tip of her tail—once battered in a spat with a roaming feral—succumbed to frostbite and finally let go.

Years ago, I set out to improve on a “nest” of blankets she used for shelter during cold weather. I cobbled together a little house for her from a cardboard box. It wasn’t much, but she loved it, especially after Kevin tucked a blanket and heating pad inside. That simple shelter kept her safe and warm through our most frigid spells. But this summer, yellowjackets moved in and claimed it, leaving Kevin no choice but to drag it away.

The other day, I spotted a box at Costco that seemed ideal for a new home. Back home, I cut a doorway, reinforced the walls with cardboard and duct tape, and did my best to strengthen it. It’s not pretty, but it promises warmth and dryness.

I delivered the box to Snowball once it was ready. She acknowledged it and peered inside. For now, she hasn’t settled in. But once Kevin stuffs a blanket and heating pad inside, she’ll be set for another winter.

Snowball

New House

—Mitchell Hegman

Weird Averages

I asked ChatGPT to help me compile some “weird” averages—items most people would not consider. I have not attempted to confirm the veracity of the following list, but here it is:

• The average person unintentionally eats 1–2 pounds of insects per year, mostly through fragments in processed food.
• Humans shed an average of 50–100 hairs a day.
• A TV remote is pressed an average of 1,500 times per year per household.
• Over a lifetime, the average person walks the equivalent of three times around the Earth.
• In a typical office setting, the average person who encounters bubble wrap will pop 4–6 bubbles before stopping.
• Humans share about 60% of their DNA with bananas (an average across species comparisons).
• The average home houses about 30 spiders at any given time, whether you notice them or not.
• The average person spends about six months of their life waiting at red lights.
• Office workers spend an average of 1.5 hours per day searching for misplaced documents, emails, or files.

—Mitchell Hegman

Computers

 “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”

—Emo Philips

“Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.”

—Steve Wozniak

“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”

—Paul R. Ehrlich

No Forgiveness in Metal

I’ve been applying finish metal to the upper walls in the kitchen at the cabin. This is a particularly tedious project given that the walls have a 45-degree jog and I must also skirt a pair of “floating” shelves

I enjoy working with metal, but there is no forgiveness in metal. It’s not like working with drywall, where you can tape and mud over mistakes. It’s not as friendly as wood, which allows you to putty a misplaced hole or slightly miscut joint. There’s no blending in.

With metal, a misplaced screw hole or a wonky cut forces you to pitch the piece into a recycle pile and start over. To date, I’ve cast aside a half-dozen pieces. Mind you, some of the profile metal sections took me several minutes to fabricate with my snips and shears.

There’s another thing: the metal can cut you. Yesterday, while trying to force a piece into a tight spot, my hand slipped and the metal cut deep into the tip of my finger—deep enough that I looked away as Desiree doctored me.

I’m sharing some photographs documenting work on the project.

The Upper Walls in Process

My Fabrication Area in the Basement

Freshly Bandaged Cut

Finished Upper Walls

—Mitchell Hegman

Sweet Tune, Sweeter Chocolate

Apparently, chocolate tastes even better if you pair it with the right soundtrack. That’s not just me talking — that’s science.

Dr. Natalie Hyacinth, a music-loving mastermind from the University of Bristol, has spent a lifetime studying how sound lulls the brain. Her conclusion: silky piano notes make chocolate taste creamier, lush strings add extra sweetness, and sharp tones crank up the bitter bite. (Fast beats, meanwhile, are best reserved for drive-thru cheeseburgers.)

To prove it, Galaxy Chocolate — a brand of chocolate products made and marketed in the United Kingdom — hired her to compose Sweetest Melody, a 90-second track designed to melt in your ears while the chocolate melts on your tongue. Think piano for sweetness, strings for silkiness, and a harp to keep things smooth.

Turns out the brain does a party trick called “multisensory integration,” where senses mingle. In other words, your ears and your taste buds are willing to clasp hands and skip along together. Music really does mess with your experience. One engineered track (Weightless by Marconi Union) has been proven to drop anxiety by 65%. Meanwhile, neuroscientists swear Bach’s Goldberg Variations can flip your brain into deep-focus mode — like Pavlov’s bell but with harpsichord.

So yes, your playlist matters. Sweet chocolate, sweet song. Bitter chocolate, maybe crank up some Metallica.

Posted below is a brief video featuring the song Sweetest Melody, composed by Dr. Natalie Hyacinth. Grab a bar of chocolate and take a listen.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIeD03OGPv8

The Last Player on Deck

It’s official. We’ve tipped beyond summer and are sliding into fall. Rabbitbrush is the tell. The bush is just now offering its precious golden blossoms.

Rabbitbrush is the prairie’s last holdout, the last hurrah. In Montana, long after gayfeather have purpled and faded and the blue grama grasses have turned dun, rabbitbrush suddenly flares—the yellow flowers like bright sparks frozen in place where they were struck.

You’ll often find rabbitbrush where the earth looks too tired for anything else—on gravelly presentations of worn earth, populating the hard scrabble between sage and stone. It will tolerate the longest winter and shrug off the sharpest wind.

Early homesteaders named it rabbitbrush because jackrabbits were often seen sheltering beneath its rounded crowns. But rabbitbrush gives more than refuge to hares. Its late flowers are a final feast for bees and butterflies, and the blooming persists long after the fussy, water-loving flowers have flourished and failed—on into the first days fringed white with frost.

A Rabbitbrush at My Drive

A Bumblebee at Work

—Mitchell Hegman

The Compliment

A little boy unlatched from his father and approached you in the grocery. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “And your hair…”

That’s all he said before he rejoined his father and drifted away. And you’ll likely never see him again.

But understand: little boys are all impulse and entrenched honesty, and this was more than a simple compliment. What he said was foundation enough for grown men to construct golden cities. Great expeditions have been launched on less.

Given the chance, the little boy would fall in love with you.

—Mitchell Hegman

Permission to Scream

I’m just going to throw this out there: I don’t think screaming like a howler monkey is necessarily an overreaction when you suddenly run your face smack into a big spiderweb.

—Mitchell Hegman

Raiding Our Neighbor’s Yard at Midday

 

Desiree and I raided our neighbor’s yard at midday yesterday. Armed with only plastic bags, we swept through an unlocked gate and swarmed—as efficiently as two people can—a plum tree drooping with sweet, ripe plums.

“Jeez, this tree is loaded,” I remarked while lifting a branch sagging down to face level under the purple weight of dozens of plums.

“Where do we begin?” Desiree asked.

“Just dig in, I guess.”

After a little assessment, I plucked a larger plum from a cluster of fruit within reach and then tore into the soft flesh with my mouth. A lovely, complex flavor profile, this: sweet, with a tart flag wavering at the fruit’s outer skin.

The tree was not tall—maybe twelve feet at the top—and virtual explosions of plums were within our reach. Within only a few minutes, we filled two plastic bags with a season of full sunlight and sweet water.

Amazing how much a modest tree can produce.

I’m sharing a few photographs of our raid, including a final shot of our plunder posed with a Cold Smoke beer as proper scale for size reference.

Reaching In

Desiree Picking Plums

Desiree’s Face in the Tree

Our Plunder with a Cold Smoke

—Mitchell Hegman

Thank you, Carmen and Jim, for letting us harvest plums (and more).

Red Ants

We’re not finished with our discussion about our ants. The red ants near my lakefront are thatched mound ants, and they are way more impressive than most of us imagine.

Formica obscuripes, the western thatching ant, is a native species of ant in the family Formicidae. It produces large mounds covered by small pieces of plant material. I have several such mounds on my property. One of them is nearly two feet in height. The number of adult workers per colony may reach up to 40,000. Most remarkable, some colonies can survive 50 years or more. This happens because they often have multiple queens (a polygynous system) and, over time, their mounds can expand, split, or even merge with nearby colonies. In this sense, a single mound can remain “alive” for generations.

The colony I mentioned in my blog yesterday is something near 20 years old. I believe it is actually the continuation of a mound that existed only ten or twelve feet away and thrived through the 1980s and 1990s. I recall on several occasions having to shoo away young boys who were pestering that colony with sticks.

Bit by bit, the ants raise their thatched mounds, weaving needles and twigs into a fortress. Within, they tend the queen, while workers spill out to forage the nearby earth. They survive our long, harsh winters cozy within their compound and then march on again in the warmer months, ignoring any and all turmoil around them.

Thatch Detail at My Anthill

Red Ant (Wikipedia)

—Mitchell Hegman

The Dead Bird Problem

What do you do with a dead bird that rolls in from the waves onto your lakefront, tangled among the requisite blunted sticks and plastic whatnots?

In this case, the bird was pretty ripe.

So—what to do?

About fifty yards up from my lakefront, there’s an interesting red anthill. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, the ants started their pile alongside a prickly pear cactus. All these years later, the cactus has grown freakishly healthy within the anthill. Me being me, I regularly walk up the hill just to watch the ants teeming over the pile.

What if I could give nature a boost in a strange way? What if I scooped up the bird with a shovel and placed it beside the anthill? Would the ants—along with flies and beetles—scavenge and repurpose the bird?

I’ve posted photographs of the bird and the anthill.

Let’s see what happens.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Church Key

If you grew up in East Helena, Montana, as I did, two things would strike you at some point. First, adults drank a lot of beer. Second, they called can and bottle openers “church keys.” After drinking a few beers of my own, I understood why everyone was drinking them. But the church key moniker mystified me until I did some research.

The first generation of beer cans didn’t have tabs of any sort for opening. They came sealed with flat tops of steel—soup-can style—and you needed a tool to access the good stuff inside. The tool was simple: a pointed piece of metal meant to pierce the lid. It resembled a key, and in the joking vernacular of the 1930s and ’40s, someone dubbed it a church key.

It was ironic, of course. The long, heavy iron keys of Europe once unlocked cathedral doors. This little steel gadget, by contrast, opened something altogether different—a fresh, cold brew. Yet the name stuck, and it spread from can openers to bottle openers. To hold one was to hold the key to daily salvation. And remember what Ben Franklin said: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Holding On a Little Longer

I woke early this morning and, in doing so, inadvertently awakened Desiree. Rather than leaving the bedroom immediately, as I normally do, I settled back onto the bed atop the bedding and gently embraced her until she fell asleep again.

Sometimes, the best part of waking early is the chance to hold on a little longer.

—Mitchell Hegman

Suman

Desiree made suman. We would call this sticky rice in my hometown of East Helena, Montana.

Watching Desiree prepare food fascinates me. Her processes never strike me as mechanical. I’m taken, instead, by the grace of her motions—the liquid certainty of every gesture, the purposeful gathering together of everything needed, the quiet flash of required cookware and utensils, the daylighting of strange ingredients from shelves I rarely access.

This is a culinary ballet.

Typically, the rice is encased in a roll fashioned from either banana or coconut leaves before steaming or boiling. Following this Filipino tradition, Desiree wrapped the rice in banana leaves, pleating the rice into packets of her own design. She will be boiling this batch of suman. The pyramid-ish packets withstand the rigors of boiling better.

Me: I’m in favor of anything built into the shape of a pyramid. And I never tire of watching Desiree at work.

Cutting Banana Leaves

Stuffing Rice into a Packet

Finished Packets

—Mitchell Hegman

Herding a Butterfly

A cabbage butterfly fluttered into my garage while both overhead doors were open.

“You don’t have many options for dinner in here,” I told it, “and you’re not beefy enough to cart off any of my stuff, so you should probably flit back out again.”

Butterflies are notoriously bad listeners, and this one did not prove an exception. It looped around my wheelbarrow, then battered about some shelves stacked with plastic bins and boxes.

After a while, I figured I might do us both a favor by herding it toward the nearest door. “C’mon, buddy, let’s go for the big light,” I said, waving my arms as I approached.

But you can’t herd a single butterfly any better than you can twenty. They do their butterfly stuff and that’s that. They never fly straight in any direction—only ups, downs, twists, reversals, and loops. After a little flailing about, like someone half-committed to karate, I gave up on my butterfly-herding career.

I went back to sorting recyclables.

Somewhere between cans, bottles, and breaking down cardboard, the cabbage butterfly tumbled back outside without my notice. I guess I need to stick to shooting cattle with my BB rifle. I know that works.

—Mitchell Hegman

Industrial Fruit Washing

I live a risky life. In particular, this applies to my fruit-eating habits. The deal is this: I never wash the apples, oranges, mangoes, grapes, or any other fruit I wrangle from the grocery displays. For years, people have warned me about the dangers of eating unwashed fruit. These hazards have been explained in fairly generic, if not vague, terms: chemicals, bugs, dirt.

That’s not enough to shake me up.

Desiree, on the other hand, is faithful to her fruit-washing commitment. Usually, this means running cold water over the fruit and letting it dry on the countertop in some fashion.

Well, apparently her fruit cleaning has gone industrial. The other day I found a pair of oranges drying alongside the dishes. I can only assume they withstood the same washing rigors as our pots and pans.

Now I’m wondering if I somehow missed the arrival of a new human-boring bug or short-people-eating disease that shows up on oranges.

At some point, I’ll ask Desiree about this.

Oranges and Dishes

—Mitchell Hegman

Tuffit Wrap-Up

We’ll be heading home today by way of Flathead Lake, then continuing on through the Swan Valley. The route gives us a chance to stop by the cabin for a quick check-in.

Our stay at Camp Tuffit has been a pleasure. Established in 1917, the camp still feels rooted in that era. Many cabins have no running water and rely on small woodstoves for heat, which keeps the place an authentic rustic retreat.

Our rooms landed on the more comfortable end of things: water, electric heat, modern(ish) appliances, and our own bathroom.

Good stuff.

Today I’m posting a few parting images.

A Shot of the Lake

Our Red Door Room

A Sunfish

Perch with a Cold Smoke Beer (For Size Reference)

Weaskuin Cabin

Inside the Cabin

—Mitchell Hegman

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

An Electrician’s Tell

You are likely familiar with a gambler’s tell. At the poker table, a player may reveal in some way that they are holding either a good or bad hand. Truth leaks out in small ways: a twitch of the jaw, a particular fuss with the chips, a silence stretched one breath too long, a sidelong glance. An observant opponent might catch this.

Electricians have tells, too. Mine show in the way I use electrical parts for things they were never meant for. At the cabin, they’re easy to spot. Cross the bridge over the creek and you’ll see copper-clad ground rods for rails. Step inside the cabin and you’ll see the lights are cusrom-built from conduit and junction boxes. Down at the fire pit, my poker stick is a length of ¾-inch conduit.

Luckily, I don’t have electrical supplies at the card table. My tells there are the of the more conventional kind.

Skywalk Lights

Kitchen Lights

An Electrician’s Fire Poker

—Mitchell Hegman

Summer Wildfire 2025

Every summer, at some hot and windblown moment, I find myself standing on my back deck, watching an arm of smoke lift from the mountains—a wildfire burning somewhere close by. Yesterday was that day for this summer. Only this time, the fire flared to life on the ridge directly across the lake from me.

Close.

The closest one yet.

The smoke was white—thankfully—an indication the fire was just getting started, feeding only on grass and small shrubs.

Dark smoke is solidly ungood.

Firefighters swarmed the ridge within minutes. Rigs and crews rolled in from the far side while, above them, helicopters wheeled and swooped, dropping loads of water onto the flames. From my deck, I could see the choreography unfold.

And within a couple of hours, they had the fire tamped down.

I even managed a few photographs of the helicopters at work—a sobering thing to witness from my deck.

Smoke on the Ridge

A Chopper Dropping Water on the Fire

—Mitchell Hegman

This and That (The Sky Is My Garden)

I launched my first blog on January 3, 2010. As of today (August 16, 2025), it’s been 15 years, 7 months, 1 week, and 6 days since that date. For reference, that’s 5,704 days in total—814 weeks and 6 days. Following the passing of Uyen, my first wife, in May of 2011, I began posting daily. In all, I’ve posted 5,195 individual blogs.

I write about this and that. I repeat myself. I’ve littered the space with typos, dangling participles, and likely violated rules without proper names. I’ve wept while writing some blogs. I’ve guffawed. I’ve cursed.

I’ve also printed out every one of my blogs and collected them in three-ring binders. Today, I’m sharing a photograph of the binders documenting my journey from 2010 until now. I placed a Cold Smoke beer on one of the shelves as a size reference. The beer is incidental—the writing is what truly measures the years.

The Sky Is My Garden

—Mitchell Hegman

A Range in the Woods

Yesterday, I installed the electric range in the kitchen at our cabin.

The day started with meeting a couple of delivery men and a big truck, then guiding them across the creek. They had to wheel the range by hand truck for the last five hundred feet or so.

Interesting story—the delivery men were both from Kandahar in Afghanistan. They had worked with American soldiers during our time in the country. One has been here for five years, the other for five months.

Once they had deposited the range in the cabin, I was able to properly locate and wire the receptacle and install the pigtail cord. I did a pretty good job and managed to energize the range and set the clock to the proper time of day.

After finishing my electrical work (brilliant and exhausting stuff, that), I watered a few this-and-thats Desiree planted around the cabin. Then I climbed to the loft for a catnap—which quickly became a proper nap. The loft is a great, faraway place for an uninterrupted rest.

I’ve posted a photograph of the range pushed into place, along with one of my view from my napping spot in the loft.

Cabin Range

The Loft

—Mitchell Hegman