A Self-Starting Fire

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been starting fires in the woodstove early in the morning and keeping them going until midday. Then, in the early evening, I have been sweeping the blackened and (theoretically) cool remaining chunks of blackened wood to the back of the stove and loading new wood in the firebox for lighting the following morning.

Last night, nearly three hours after I loaded the stove for the morning, as Desiree and I sat on the sofa, she asked, “Did you start a fire?”

“Nope. I will tomorrow.”

I followed her gaze toward the woodstove twenty-some feet to my right. After only a second or two, I saw an orange flame curtsy forth and then withdraw again. A quick dash to the stove revealed that flames at the back of the firebox were actively scissoring at the lengths of wood I’d stacked together.

A fire had started itself.

Above all, this is a cautionary tale. Consider the Bucksnort Fire of the year 2000. That wildfire, started by charcoal thought to be burned out and tossed onto the ground, escalated into a conflagration that swept through 9,500 acres only ten miles or so from my house as the crow flies. This is dry country. The fuels are dry. Fire will claw its way back from winking coals if given any chance. Even in a woodstove, attentiveness is advised.

The Self-Starting Fire

—Mitchell Hegman

Embraced

While wandering about on the indigenous fringes of my property, I found Romeo and Juliet.

A quick synopsis of their tragedy: two young lovers from feuding families fall into a secret, desperate romance. Knowing they would not be allowed to embrace in life, they instead embrace in death.

In my local scrubland version of this tale, Romeo is a juniper and Juliet is a rock. Romeo died some years ago and was upended by the elements, exposing his tangle of roots. And this is where you find our Juliet, a smooth-sided rock Romeo gathered gently into his roots when he was young. Even all these years after death, Romeo still holds Juliet close.

I’m sharing a photograph of my Romeo and Juliet.

The Embrace

—Mitchell Hegman

It’s the Berries

In the end, the Townsend Solitaire wins.

If you are unfamiliar, the Solitaire is a somewhat bratty, juniper-berry-obsessed bird. Gray in color and quick on the wing, it’s a member of the thrush family, which includes the Western Bluebird and the American Robin. Here in Montana, these slim gray birds don’t bother migrating. Instead, they overwinter in the scrub and survive almost entirely on juniper berries. But they don’t just eat them: they stake claims. A single Solitaire will pick a cluster of juniper bushes in the fall and defend it with unwavering conviction, chasing away any bird or any innocent passerby (read “Mitch” here) that wanders too close to its chosen stash.

I am familiar with this because solitaires have been staking claims on my property for as long as I can remember. Typically, I see them perched high in the ponderosa trees or junipers so they can watch over their holding of juniper berries.

Theirs is a simple strategy: “It’s the berries, stupid.”

Given the abundance of juniper here, these birds thrive. While other nearby species have struggled to maintain stable populations, the Townsend Solitaire has held firm.

Both last year and this year, a Solitaire has included my house in its area of claim. So far, we’ve gotten along swimmingly.

Photo: Jonathon Jongsma

—Mitchell Hegman

More Valuable

Perhaps the earth underfoot is worth more now that it has swallowed Robbie.

This is by Robbie’s own accounting, of course. In a practical way of thinking (as opposed to the emotional), Robbie imagined he would be more valuable if he swallowed things of value.

As near as I can tell, a realistic 2025 estimate for the elemental value of a human body is around $130–$150, assuming you’re just breaking it down into its basic elements—oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and our weird mix of trace minerals.

That’s not terribly valuable, and maybe that’s what Robbie considered when, at the age of about ten, he swallowed a small piece of flint he’d found on one of our excursions into the open fields near our hometown. “There,” he said, “now I’m worth something.”

Looking back, I realize that swallowing sharp rocks is likely not the best idea, but at ten years old such judgments are unreachable. At the time, there seemed a firm logic to his thinking.

I lost track of Robbie as we entered our teens. Perhaps he escalated to swallowing sapphires and gold to appropriately increase his value. I can’t be sure. But he passed not long ago and the ground swallowed him. Surely the earth is more valuable when it swallows your friends.     

—Mitchell Hegman

Band Strategy

Every jigsaw puzzle requires a unique strategy, or a mix of strategies, for piecing it together. We’re talking about all the normal stuff: starting with assembling the edge pieces, sorting pieces to your liking, finding and assembling them based on color, and letting the shapes speak to you.

Then come the bigger-picture tactics. Maybe you chase the sky first. Maybe a little house, a moose, or a boat catches your eye. Whatever the focus, most puzzles end up the same way: scattered islands slowly appear within the borders and then gradually connect as you hover over the table, feeding pieces in.

Good stuff.

The puzzle we are presently working on is strange. The usual methods don’t form islands at all. As you assemble pieces, they march you straight into building rows and then full-length bands across the entire scene of Emerald Lake. It comes together almost like a loom weaving a rug: one tidy row followed by another, the whole thing sliding into place with notable orderliness.

I find the weird organization of this puzzle satisfying. It feels more mechanical than organic.

Emerald Lake

—Mitchell Hegman

A Little Jazz

As part of the remodel for our small bathroom, we opted to add small, dark brown trim pieces to the existing whitewashed pine crown trim at the edge of the ceiling. It’s not much, just adding a little jazz to the simple lines of the existing wood.

We’re pleased with the results. The room feels decidedly different with just that small addition. It’s like adding racing stripes to a muscle car.

Crown Before Adding Trim

Crow After Adding Trim

The Bathroom as of Today

—Mitchell Hegman

The Clothes Dryer Riot

I’ve never been in or near a riot. But I’ve spent plenty of time partying in the bars of East Helena on rodeo nights, which may be as close as you can get to one without courting substantial jail time. As a kid, I also survived recess at a Catholic grade school—an experience that ranged from raucous to downright lawless.

Last night we stumbled into another near riot right here at the house, at least the audible version of one. After washing two pairs of tennis shoes, we tossed them into the clothes dryer for a spin.

Oh my. Even with towels pitched in to soften the blows, it sounded as if sofas and lounge chairs were slam dancing inside a barrel.

A quick life hack: after washing your tennis shoes, let them air-dry on a sunny sidewalk.

—Mitchell Hegman

Smashed Dinner

Desiree smashed last night’s dinner. I’m not talking about mashing it by some mechanical contrivance. I mean she literally stood atop our dinner and wiggled to squash it flat. This is not as crazy as it sounds. The idea was to make a thick shell from pre-cooked small potatoes pressed between two cupcake pans.

I need to preface the next part of our story by mentioning that this is exactly the sort of thing that makes me love Desiree unconditionally. Here it is: the next step is where she filled the cups with cheese and bacon bits.

Pure brilliance, this.

I’ve posted three photographs documenting our smashed dinner.

Desiree Smashing Our Dinner

Small Potatoes Mashed Into the Pan

Potato Cups Filled with Cheese and Bacon Bits

—Mitchell Hegman

Falling Stars

Somewhere north of 2:00 AM I woke with a start. The tail end of a sound had just whipped past me. A single, strange rush of air. Not a bump. Not a clunk. Not anything metallic or fleshy. Just one odd sweep and then silence.

As I lay there in the predawn dark, I rather quickly surmised that whatever it was, it wasn’t dangerous. Something that weird almost had to be harmless. I figured daylight would sort it out.

Late the following afternoon, Desiree found her window display of lighted plastic stars collapsed onto the sill and spilled to the floor. And, there, our answer. I had been awakened by the sound of falling stars.

Our Fallen Stars

—Mitchell Hegman

The Accusatory Stare

Someone left their poodle in the car next to where I parked at the store. When I glanced over, I found the dog staring directly at me, intently. Frankly, I didn’t like it. The stare felt accusatory—more a glower—like the dog knew that less than an hour ago I ate the last lemon cookie before Desiree got to it.

This is the reason I’ve always preferred to live with cats. A cat will stare right through you because they know you really don’t matter in the long run.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Upside

I would like this blog to be the equivalent of a whisper. I especially want to keep this on the down-low while in the vicinity of any teenagers.

Gather up. Here it is. Apparently, teenage binge-drinking may provide a key to success later in life.

According to Norwegian sociologist Willy Pedersen, young people who knock back drinks together may be doing more than loosening up. They may also be wiring in valuable social skills.

Two asides here. First, drinking alcohol at any age has a host of well-established downsides. Second, there is some wiggle room for distrusting a sociologist named Willy. That said, Pedersen’s long-term study tracked more than 3,000 Norwegians from early teens into adulthood and found that the hard partiers in their late teens and early twenties ended up with higher levels of education and income than those who barely drank at all.

The theory is simple enough: alcohol, in a social setting, acts like a kind of glue. It helps the shy find their footing, smooths the edges of awkwardness, and nudges doors open that might otherwise stay shut. Pedersen even points to groups like Oxford’s infamous Bullingdon Club, a drinking society whose alumni list reads like a political résumé.

But before anyone hands out six-packs to teens to boost their prospects, a quiet reminder: correlation is not destiny. As The Times of London noted, many of these high-flyers may have already been halfway up the ladder. And it must also be noted that some of my party-going high school buddies crashed later in life.

Still, whispered or not, the idea lingers: maybe a little communal chaos in youth can age into something surprisingly polished down the line.

Cold Smoke Beer

—Mitchell Hegman

Reality-Based Solutions

Given the “reality-based” programs we tend to watch, Desiree and I now figure we are qualified to solve a murder with very little evidence. We can help you glean more gold from your paydirt. We can bake a cake with wings or legs. We can help you survive in the wild if you happen to end up out there, naked. And, given the ads focused on our demographic, we can prescribe the drug Skyrizi to battle your plaque psoriasis.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Small Big Thing (35 Years Late)

My late wife, Uyen, and I constructed our house (with the help of many dear friends) using cash. We didn’t secure a construction loan, which provided us with more freedom relative to a timeline for finishing the house. But, given that, we struck a deal with each other when we broke ground to build our house in the late summer of 1990: we would not move into the new house until we had completely finished every room.

I didn’t quite hold up my end of that deal. One small thing remained undone. I never applied the trim to cover the upper track of the bi-fold door in the closet just inside the garage entry—a detail unnoticed by everyone but me. Yesterday, thirty-five years late, I finally cut and nailed that last piece of trim in place.

Remember what Neil Armstrong said when he took his first step on the Moon? This feels a little like that. A small big thing.

I’m sharing photographs of that final piece of trim.

Entry Closet

Track Before Trim

Trim in Place

—Mitchell Hegman

What It Really Means

Sustainable living: ready access to beer and vegetables.

Reality check: stepping on something wet and squishy on your way to the bathroom in the dark of night.

Insurmountable problem: a belt that cannot loosen any further.

Good neighbor: the one who buys the beer.

Home improvement: finding new and creative ways to hide extension cords.

Road to success: fixing the thing you broke last weekend while fixing another thing.

—Mitchell Hegman

We Survived So We Could Live Again

Today, we celebrate a remarkable achievement. My friend Sandi Coyle Benson has published and released a biography about her father, James R. Coyle. Titled We Survived So We Could Live Again, the book offers a deeply researched and well-documented account of her father’s military service during World War II.

Before the United States was drawn into the war, James Coyle was stationed in the Philippines. While he was there, the Japanese bombed and invaded the islands. Ultimately, he spent 1,184 days as a Japanese-held prisoner of war.

Sandi’s father endured unthinkable brutality during his captivity. Like so many American soldiers, he returned home and spoke little about what he had experienced. Thanks to Sandi’s determination and careful research, his full story can now be told.

Yesterday, Desiree and I picked up a copy of the book from Sandi. Both of us are eager to read it—me, because I remember James and have been friends with Sandi since grade school; and Desiree, because her grandfather fought alongside American soldiers to defend his homeland.

Sandi and Me with A Copy of Her Book

—Mitchell Hegman

The Swarming Sky

While soaking in the hot tub last night and gazing up at the sprawling canopy of stars, we spotted a pair of satellites crawling across the sky on the same path. Soon another appeared behind them. And then another. Before we were done, fifteen satellites had traced the same narrow line overhead.

We had, quite clearly, witnessed a Starlink satellite chain being drawn into service. Starlink satellites are launched in groups of sixty, and they initially travel in a “chain” formation before spreading out and settling into their own orbits.

I think back to my boyhood, after the Soviet launch of Sputnik, when I spent countless nights scanning the heavens before finally spotting my first satellite drifting slowly across the Milky Way. Today, our sky is aswarm with them. Look up for any length of time, and you’re certain to see a man-made object crossing one of the thousands of orbits now enmeshed aloft.

It’s not difficult to imagine that someday we’ll overcrowd the “usable” space above us. This is a human tendency.

I’ve posted a video of a Starlink chain crossing our busy skies.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z7iOlvWEDk8

Our Giger Commode

Calling our new toilet sexy might be putting unneeded strain on our language, so I won’t go that far. Still, our new commode features design elements that set it apart from your typical workmanlike models. I like it.

In profile, the toilet reminds me of the work of Swiss artist H. R. Giger. His artwork is always surreal and often blurs the line between organic and mechanical forms. You may recall his creation of the iconic creature from the 1979 movie Alien.

The toilet, however, is bright white—whereas Giger’s works are typically dark in every sense of the word.

At any rate, I installed our new commode yesterday. I’m sharing two photographs of that, along with one of Giger’s works as a point of reference.

Side View

Set in Place

H.R. Giger

—Mitchell Hegman

Morning Report, November 8, 2025

After setting my coffee to brewing, I waddle to the woodstove and start a fire. At first, a single flame dances tenderly, seemingly innocently below an assembly I made last night in the firebox. The flames soon waver up into fingers clutching at the split lengths of wood.

I watch.

In a matter of minutes, the fire has become a thing of greed. Embers grin red at blackened fringes. Heat shoulders against me. Flames fill the entire box.

Hello, old friend.

I consider.

I am old. This is not how I identify, but this is how I classify. The passing years and all of my memories have somehow gathered themselves into a monolithic presentation. Yesterday feels the same as the times I sat sharing an afternoon cup of coffee with my grandmother forty-some years ago. In my mind, I’m still celebrating our landing on the moon. And directly beside that, I’m cutting the stray ends of my wife’s hair last week.

Hello, new friend.

—Mitchell Hegman

An Empty Room

We’ve fully engaged in a remodel of the common bathroom in our house. While the room has been repainted once, and I installed crown trim along the walls at the ceiling a half-dozen years ago, the vanity, toilet, and flooring are now 34 years old.

You may recall that this is the bathroom I inadvertently flooded a couple of years ago. That mishap damaged the vanity and swelled the subfloor in several locations. I removed the vanity a couple of days ago, and yesterday I pulled the toilet and prepped the room for painting.

It now feels strange and a little uncomfortable walking past the empty bathroom on my way down the hall to the bedroom. The feeling isn’t quite as jarring as finding an empty cupboard, but it’s close. The bathroom hasn’t looked this bare in 34 years.

On a final note, I’m not going to miss the toilet. Faithfully cleaning it all these years hasn’t exactly endeared me to it. Truthfully, I’m excited about the shiny new number we’ve chosen as its replacement. The new one is sleek and sports interesting curves.

We can have a full-on toilet talk later.

Before Toilet Removal

Empty Bathroom

—Mitchell Hegman

A Big Kitty in My Tree

It’s not unusual to spot a housecat in a tree. They are natural climbers. Even some of the bigger wild cats will climb. But finding a long-extinct saber-toothed cat in your golden willow registers as fairly remarkable.

Weirdly enough, that very thing happened to me.

More on that in a minute.

During the Ice Ages, Montana was home to a variety of exotic fauna, including mammoths, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats. Fossil evidence suggests the big cats roamed the northern plains alongside herds of bison and other large prey. These cats were built for power and ambushed the herd beasts when they wanted dinner. All of these large animals disappeared around the end of the last Ice Age (10,000 to 12,000 years ago), likely victims of a changing landscape and possibly the growing presence of early humans across North America.

So, while on a walk along the lakeshore yesterday, I spotted a saber-toothed cat—not of the flesh-and-blood variety, but rather a flat version of one fashioned from metal, wood, and composite materials. The big cat was fastened to a limb by means of lag screws. The obvious work of my neighbor, this.

The cat in my tree came from a now “extinct” and dismantled display of the Pleistocene epoch at the old Montana Historical Society Museum. Surprisingly, I’m not opposed to keeping the big kitty in my tree. I’ve always liked cats. Even flat ones.

I’m sharing two photographs of the cat in my tree:

Saber-Toothed Cat Up Close

Saber-Toothed Cat in the Golden Willow

—Mitchell Hegman

Our Conversation About Dinner

[Scene: The kitchen. A sharp aroma hangs in the air.]

 

ME: (entering) “What’s that smell?”

DESIREE: “Fish sauce.”

ME: “It doesn’t smell very good. What are we eating, exactly?”

DESIREE: “Veggies.”

ME: “Well, the fish sauce doesn’t smell great.”

DESIREE: “It’s fermented.”

ME: “That makes sense. Do I like veggies with fish sauce?”

DESIREE: “Of course.”

ME: “Good to know.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Message in a Bottle

More than a century after Private Malcolm Alexander Neville sailed off to fight in World War I, a message he wrote to his mother washed ashore on a remote Australian beach. Written on August 15, 1916, and sealed inside a Schweppes bottle, the letter struck a hopeful tone. “Having a real good time,” he wrote. “Food is real good so far, with the exception of one meal, which we buried at sea.” The 28-year-old soldier signed off, “Your loving son Malcolm … Somewhere at sea,” and added a note asking that whoever found the message send it to his mother in tiny Wilkawatt, South Australia. Neville was killed in action in France in April 1917.

The bottle surfaced 109 years later on Wharton Beach near Esperance, discovered by a family while collecting rubbish. Amazingly preserved by sand and time, the cork still held, and inside lay the faded pencil letter of a man long gone but not forgotten. “We believe it’s been buried because it’s so well preserved,” said Debra Brown, who helped recover the note. “If it had lived in the ocean for 109 years, it would have sunk to the bottom.” Using surgical tweezers, the family gently freed Neville’s two-page letter and later tracked down his surviving relatives, who were deeply moved by the message that had finally made its way home.

The Bottle

Malcolm Alexander Neville

—Mitchell Hegman

Laws of Nature (Personal Observations and Preferences)

• It’s dumb that the foods you crave are always bad for you.
• You should be able to choose the direction of gravity’s pull.
• Male pattern baldness is just wrong.
• I’d be a lot better off if water tasted like Cold Smoke beer.
• Spiders should be optional.
• There should be some room for adjustment in winter temperatures.
• Bottom line: more flowers.

—Mitchell Hegman

Flat Tires

Not surprisingly, the tire shop didn’t have a Cold Smoke beer… and I really needed one.

Allow me to explain.

The rear, passenger-side tire on our car developed an air leak. As soon as I noticed this, I pumped it full of air and raced off to the tire shop. While a technician worked to find and repair the problem, I poked around the shop a bit. I immediately found a small collection of objects technicians had removed from tires over the years: long screws, nails, a small wrench, and various lengths of metal. Next to this collection, I found three sections cut from tires with large objects impaling them.

This is where I needed the Cold Smoke beer. I wanted to place a beer beside the sections of tire for a better sense of size. Instead, I resorted to placing a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in the foreground before taking the photograph I’m sharing today. I’m astounded by the damage to the tires featured here. What sort of road dynamics can account for this?

After repairing my tire, the technician presented me with the rather tiny rock responsible for my slow leak. Not impressive at all, actually. I’m surprised this little guy managed to work all the way through the tread. I’ve posted a proper photograph of this rock next to a Cold Smoke beer.

Tire Shop Examples

Cold Smoke and Rock

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Voltaire Said

Long before the age of electric guitars and rock stars giving themselves single names such as Sting or Slash, a French writer named François-Marie Arouet did the same. He reinvented himself as Voltaire. Under that single banner, he wrote bold treatises challenging the norms and authorities du jour.

Following are three biting quotes from Voltaire:

—"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

—"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

—"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.”

—Mitchell Hegman