While walking down my country road, an old man with a gray beard and long gray hair drove up on his four-wheeler and stopped beside me.
I spoke: “You know, when we were kids throwing
rocks around East Helena and setting vacant fields on fire, I never imagined
I’d one day see you driving up on me as an old man.”
My good buddy and lakeshore neighbor Kevin laughed
from atop his machine.
—Mitchell Hegman
The trees are a righteous mess. I’m referring, of course, to the trees in the latest jigsaw puzzle we are piecing together. The puzzle features a pair of wolves in a winter scene in Yellowstone National Park. The backdrop is a forest comprised of pine trees. What makes the trees difficult is the fact they are without helpful detail because they are out of focus in the original photograph. Also, they are rendered in something of a messy stew of the same drab colors.
The only option for this puzzle is “extreme”
sorting. I had to not only sort into groups of similar shades of color, but
also further sort out and align pieces of similar shapes into orderly rows.
Ultimately, finding and placing pieces involves a
fairly equal mix of rooting through the colors and testing similarly shaped
pieces. Often, three or four pieces will “almost” fit before I finally locate
the desired piece.
This is a very challenging puzzle. I expect I may
have days where I only manage a dozen or so pieces.
—Mitchell Hegman
After watching an episode of Deadliest Catch, Desiree and I both entertained intense cravings for Alaskan king crab. “Let’s check the current price,” I suggested.
As the price comparisons rolled in, Desiree and I
simply gaped at our electronic devices.
“Maybe some potato chips instead,” I proposed.
—Mitchell Hegman
While pulling down lengths of split cordwood from a stack outside what I consider our “utility” garage door, it occurred to me that I’m 35 years late on an apology.
Let’s explore this, starting with the garage door.
I’m talking about a third overhead door in our
garage. While the other two provide standard access for our automobiles, this
door is off in the far north corner and simply opens up to my xeriscape yard.
Uyen, my late wife, and I designed the garage with three doors, but by the time
we reached the framing phase, I had second thoughts and wanted to eliminate the
door.
Uyen and I only rarely fell into tiffs, but this
issue led us to something of a prolonged skirmish. “We could save a lot of
money,” I reasoned. And I landed on a final note that “we will never use the
door.”
In the end, I gave in, and we completed
construction with the door in place.
I wound up being correct for the first 33 years we
lived in the house. We never used the door. But that changed two years ago when
we had a woodstove installed. The small concrete slab outside the door, with
easy access through the door, is ideal for cordwood storage.
It’s my go-to place now.
Today, I offer my apologies to Uyen. It took me a
while to get here, but she proved prescient in the long run.
—Mitchell Hegman
I woke with a start when a small moth or some such got caught in my eyebrow as I lay sleeping. I woke, as my buddy Kenny used to say, “going about it like a one-armed man killing snakes.” I very nearly tore myself apart in my efforts to extricate the bug.
In calmer local news, our recent frosty mornings
have forced us to harvest the last of our tomatoes. Desiree has been charged
with working up an emergency dish in which she can use up the batch. And
yesterday, I had to shoot three of Billy’s longhorns in the ass to keep them at
a distance from our yard.
Finally, I would like to use this platform to make
something of a public service announcement. If you happen to look out in the
direction of where I live and see smoke, don’t call it in as a wildfire. It’s
just Desiree burning stuff down at the lake in one of her (mostly) controlled
fires.
End of morning report.
—Mitchell Hegman
Sometimes, when soaking outside in the hot tub in the darkness, my eyes will be drawn to the glittering torrent of stars above me. Soon, I’ll be pondering the possibility of another Earth-like planet out there at the far, smoldering edge of what I see. And if there is some form of aliens out there, I wonder if they get together on weekends and melt aluminum beer cans in big-assed campfires the way we do?
—Mitchell Hegman
Choosing the proper tool for the job is key for all endeavors. That said, sometimes, when dealing with food, your standard cooking utensils and array of sharp knives may not offer the horsepower required for a job. On rare occasions, you may be forced to drag construction tools into the kitchen as part of the culinary process.
When Desiree mentioned she needed to cut some whole
frozen fish she’d retrieved from one freezer into sections so she could store
them in a smaller freezer, I instantly recognized the required tool: my hacksaw
The saw performed well and provided quick, clean
cuts. But I already had in mind applying my corded reciprocating saw to the
fish if the hacksaw failed.
On my last grocery shopping adventure, I witnessed some poor bugger struggling to open a plastic bag he’d just torn from the roll next to the bin where he was about to select apples. I felt great sympathy for the man. I, similarly, am incapable of opening the bags. Luckily, I have an escape hatch. I simply hand the bags to Desiree, telling her, “Genetically, I’m ill-equipped to open these.”
Watching her immediately swish open the bags is
humbling.
The man at the apples wrestled with the bag for a
considerable length of time. I had a solid urge to step over, give him a hug,
and say, “You’re not alone, brother, and I’m happy to share the planet with
you.”
—Mitchell Hegman
At this point, I’ve watched a couple of videos exploring various scenarios where AI goes rogue and then tries to save itself from getting unplugged at all costs, including wiping out us pesky humans.
Scary thoughts.
I think I might be a possible solution to the
problem. Just let me go in a little deeper than the surfacy stuff I normally
do. I’m pretty sure I can screw up AI just as readily as I did my Stone Age
computer when I operated it beyond my skill level.
—Mitchell Hegman
It’s been a while since I provided an update on our lemon tree. For anyone keeping track, Desiree coaxed the tree to emerge from a seed in October of 2022. Simple math provides that the tree has been growing for four years now. It has suffered attacks from both spider mites and aphids. To save it from the mites, Desiree trimmed it down to what looked like an artless collection of sticks.
Today, the lemon tree is healthy, pest-free, has
grown as tall as it has ever been, and is even leafing out with new growth. The
only shadow is cast by the plant’s reluctance to produce either blossoms or
fruit.
I asked ChatGPT about the blooming thing. This was
the response: “A seed-grown lemon may take 5 to 10 years to reach flowering
maturity. Some never produce particularly good fruit. So your tree may not be
doing anything wrong at all. It may simply be taking the scenic route.”
Apparently, grafted trees are much friskier than
those grown from seed. Maybe next year.
I’ve posted a photograph of the lemon tree with me
standing behind it. I’m also holding a can of Cold Smoke beer for accuracy in
reference to size.
—Mitchell Hegman
In the realm of human endeavor, some things are universal. They penetrate into every culture and nose their way into every corner. Obviously, love for children is universal, as is the human urge to push a button clearly marked “Do Not Push.” We can also add to that the tenet that if a little fire is good, a lot of fire is better.
Desiree has a healthy dose of the fire thing. I
think she inherited this from her grandfather, a lovely man keen on burning
everything trimmed or naturally shed from his array of tropical fruit trees.
In an effort to feed the continuum, following our
first snowstorm, we started a fire off the lakeshore so we could burn several
large stacks of juniper, sagebrush, and Russian olive branches we trimmed over
the course of the summer.
Desiree went about burning stuff as if we had no
tomorrow. She very likely had more fun than she should have. I’m sharing a
photograph I captured of her doing her best James Brown dance move just before
dropping branches on the fire.
—Mitchell Hegman
In 1967, Disney released the animated film The Jungle Book. The film follows Mowgli, a young human boy raised by a pack of wolves in the Indian jungle. A seemingly far-fetched thing, that. But something only a decade before that, a real-life adventure much like this occurred in the Colombian jungle. Not with wolves, but with monkeys and a small girl who now goes by the name Marina Chapman.
Marina Chapman says she was abducted from her home
in Colombia at age four and abandoned in the jungle. She awoke to find herself
surrounded by nature. She remembered: "I realized it's a forest and then I
realized an animal... one monkey came, and then some more followed him, and
they came closer to me and they were staring at me. I was quite upset and one
of them came and start to pop my ears and they start to touch me."
The black-and-white capuchin primates eventually
lost interest but continued to return to check on her. They didn't immediately
welcome her, but gradually began climbing onto her shoulders and playing with
her hair. Eventually, they accepted her as part of the troop.
She somehow survived for several years in the
company of capuchin monkeys, learning to communicate with them through whistles
and screeches and scavenging food they left behind. She came to regard the
monkeys as family. Once, when she became ill after eating the wrong seeds, an
older monkey dragged her into a pool of water, where she drank until she began
to feel better.
One day, Marina found a piece of mirror and saw her
reflection for the first time. She was shocked, having come to think of herself
as one of the monkeys.
Some years after living with the monkeys, a group
of hunters found Marina. She was transported to Cucuta, Colombia, where she was
taken to a brothel, but she managed to escape. She lived on the streets until a
couple in England took her in and raised her. Learning to function among people
was difficult, and learning to trust them was harder still.
Marina went on to marry, raise two daughters, and
become a grandmother. Remarkably, she says her greatest regret was leaving the
jungle for what turned out to be an often brutal civilization.
—Mitchell Hegman
On a drive into town, I decided I wanted a jazzier display on the car’s touchscreen. That’s when it occurred to me that the inventors of this technology failed to consider people like me. It’s not that I struggle to manage the screen or have allowed it to intimidate me. The problem is more profound than that. I’m a kid from East Helena, Montana, and I typically wash my hands only when my mom tells me to. And she has not been available to admonish me for a long time.
So, for me, I’m often working with smearscreen
technology.
—Mitchell Hegman
As a Montana native, I’m prepared for the weather to yank me out of summer and flop me directly into a snowbank at any given moment. As a matter of survival, I have a coat stashed away in my car and truck at all times.
Plants, on the other hand, face all of this harsh
weather treatment shirtless and with their pants pulled down.
This is not always a winning strategy.
So, a week ago, here at the ragged end of fall, I
discovered that one of the native soapweed yucca plants in my yard had shot
forth a flower spike with an array of flowers preparing to bloom.
A little late, pal.
Flowering is a June activity for yucca. A bloom
stalk appearing in early October is therefore a botanical curveball. I’m not
sure how to explain it. We have been unusually mild this fall. I'm wondering
if this has somehow fooled the plant in some manner.
I’m sharing a photograph of the yucca. Given our
upcoming cold, I wonder how far the flowers will develop before the entire
collection of us is flung into a snowbank.
—Mitchell Hegman
Social media is now awash with better versions of everyday folks. Thanks to AI, you can ship your photo off through the mysterious blue tubes and have it altered to your preferences.
Question.
Why not me?
The other day I grabbed a photo (electronically
speaking) and handed it off to ChatGPT with firm instructions to “make me
handsome.” That’s quite a cliff to climb, I realize, but ChatGPT made a valiant
effort by removing wrinkles and giving me a tan.
Desiree also took a run at handsoming me up with an
app on her droid. Apparently, that application deemed a mean-looking version of
me would be more attractive.
As it stands, I think I’ll stick with the features
I inherited from the thousands of years of questionable selective breeding and
occasional bouts of heavy drinking.
I’ve posted my original photo along with the
altered versions.
Long before I landed in my career as an electrician, I danced through a host of other jobs, including a stint at a local department store. While there, I had the good fortune of being responsible for the toy department, which fit me beautifully. My boss, however, walked with a waddle and said strange things to me. Often, he would stop by just to say, “Everybody loves a duck, Mitch.”
He was my boss, so I never tried to get to the
bottom of that.
Years later, I got even in my own fashion. The
sprinkler fitter foreman on a big commercial job proved an apt target. He was
nearly too friendly and an obvious drug abuser. I liked him a lot. He smoked a
pipe, which refused to stay lit for him, and he stared at the wood-framed walls
for an inordinately long time before drilling the holes required for his
system. I often strode right up to him just to say “perpendicular” with raised
eyes before briskly walking away in silence.
—Mitchell Hegman
We finished our quirky Peckish Pirates puzzle. Toward the end, Desiree fell into something strikingly near an obsession to finish piecing it together, which gave me ample room to sip on a single-malt Scotch and throw a piece in now and then.
I must admit, I enjoyed the mental steeplechase the
puzzle put us through with all of its unique features. And once we had the
puzzle fully assembled, we opened a sealed package and tackled a second round
with puzzle magic.
Good stuff, that!
I won’t divulge details on the second round with
The Peckish Pirates. It’s a scoundrel-of-the-seas secret. But I can share a
photograph of the puzzle before we applied the magic and a photograph of the
unopened magic packet.
—Mitchell Hegman
I hope there is a place reserved in hell for people who don’t recharge cordless tool batteries when they run them down. And I hope it’s a place where everyone desperately needs to go to the bathroom but finds themselves stuck for eternity negotiating a series of intersections where nobody uses their turn signal.
—Mitchell Hegman
I have an update on the puzzle we are working on. It’s titled The Peckish Pirates. When you piece the entire thing together, you are charged with opening up a second package for some additional “magic” to be applied.
Putting the thing together is, I hazard to say it,
puzzling. First, we had six corner pieces. Once you get in a bit deeper, you
discover that the inside is filled with edge pieces. Also, there is a series of
three sets of three pieces that can be interchanged (incorrectly) at three
waterfalls within the puzzle. Finally, the box says the puzzle will measure 28
x 21 inches, but it appears to be closer to 28 x 19 inches.
I am posting a photograph of the three
interchangeable sections and another photograph showing our progress to date.
In the event you plan on doing this puzzle
yourself, I will not divulge anything more about the puzzle, other than a final
photograph before we apply the magic.
—Mitchell Hegman
Billy’s longhorn cattle have been busting out of their fence and trying, on occasion, to put a sneak on our yard to eat the good stuff Desiree has been tending there. The answer to that, naturally, is to go full-frontal Western.
I now have my trusty Red Ryder air rifle stationed
at the front door. If the longhorns plod near my yard, I fill my hands, storm
out the door, and shoot the cattle in the ass.
It’s impressive how quickly a few well-placed shots
persuade the longhorns to pivot to a new direction.
—Mitchell Hegman
As an electrician, I made a career out of calling attention to stuff that bothered me. In the construction industry, electricians are known for being, shall we say, persnickety. Apparently, this trait has chased along into my retirement.
Stuff is still bothering me.
Today we need to chat about pale junipers because
they have been bothering me for quite some time. Here’s the thing: in theory,
we have only one type of juniper tree growing in our region, the Rocky Mountain
juniper. But on my property, I have several junipers that are pale green
compared to the vast majority. The bark on the young branches is even slightly
lighter in color.
Explain that, please.
I sent AI a couple of photographs comparing the
pale juniper to others, and then we engaged in a lengthy discussion. In the
long run, we both figure the pale junipers are the same species, but the pale
types have a slight genetic kink. In my way of thinking, it’s equivalent to
humans with blonde hair and blue eyes compared to brunettes with brown eyes.
Both still have car payments, dirty dishes in the sink, an aversion to cold
weather, and are otherwise human.
I’m a little less bothered now, but the electrician
in me will never fully let go.
I have posted a photograph of two junipers growing
side-by-side, with the pale juniper on the left. In person, the contrast is
striking.
—Mitchell Hegman
Papaya trees are botanical oddballs. For starters, they aren't really trees. They are giant herbs pretending to be trees, capable of reaching 30 feet on a soft, somewhat hollow trunk. They cluster enormous leaves at the top while the fruit grows directly from the trunk, as though the plant forgot to grow branches and decided to improvise. They are also in a hurry, sprinting from seed to producing fruit in about a year.
Papayas also have an unusual reproductive
arrangement. Individual plants can be male, female, or hermaphroditic, with
some capable of pollinating themselves. Unfortunately, papayas have zero
interest in challenging a windblown Montana winter. Papayas crave heat,
sunshine, and tropical conditions.
Now, the strange thing: Desiree sliced open a
papaya a few days ago and stuffed a few sections with seeds intact in the
refrigerator. When I grabbed a slice for a snack, I discovered that one of the
seeds had germinated, pushing forth a miniature tusk of a thing.
I think it likes Montana.
I put the sprout in a bowl with a wet paper towel
for a bed. I’m considering giving the papaya a run in the sunroom if it doesn’t
perish.
—Mitchell Hegman
Sometime back, a self-proclaimed wine connoisseur informed me that no self-respecting person would purchase wine that comes in a bottle with a twist top rather than a cork.
It’s just bad policy.
If there is any validity to this, I now have a
peculiar problem. My go-to red wine for the last fifteen years has arrived in a
bottle with a cork. But when I picked up a half dozen bottles to replenish my
stock a couple of days ago, two of them had twist tops.
I lay no claim to being any sort of wine
whatchamacallit, and I don't wish to trespass upon anyone's wine sensibilities,
but I fully intend to twist the tops off the bottles and drink the wine.
I suppose I’ll need to describe it differently now,
too: My wine has an earthy start with a trailer-park, twist-top finish.
I have posted a photograph comparing two bottles of
the same wine.
—Mitchell Hegman
Now that the seasons are changing and we are slipping toward winter and more time indoors, it’s time for me to work on jigsaw puzzles. Yesterday, I started sorting pieces for one. Every piece of the 1000-piece puzzle is uniquely shaped. Some are shaped like animals, fruit, or other familiar objects.
As always, I first try to sort out the edge and
corner pieces as an assembly strategy. I quickly bumped into a weird problem: I
found six of the four corner pieces I need.
I think we can all agree that a rectangular puzzle
has only four right-angle corner pieces. Finding six of them rather stopped me
in my tracks. Naturally, I consulted the picture of the puzzle and quickly
identified four rightful corner pieces. Not long after, I found where the other
two pieces will land as run-of-the-mill edge pieces.
I am sharing a photograph of the six corner pieces
and another showing where the two oddball corners will be placed. I think we
may be in for a wild ride on this puzzle.
—Mitchell Hegman
I’ve seen plenty of warnings out there cautioning
people not to drive while distracted, but apparently, I missed all the warnings
about working while distracted. Yesterday, while finishing the last few details
on the metal I installed on the cabin’s lower wall, I learned a valuable lesson
about that.
I’m sharing a photograph of my drill. Somehow, I
managed to fall out of focus enough to chuck my pencil in my drill instead of
the twist bit I needed. The only thing I can say is that at least I was not
likely to harm anyone, and an eraser could have fixed any damage done.
—Mitchell Hegman
I have posted one of my favorite songs by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (sometimes abbreviated to BRMC), an American rock band from San Francisco, California. The group was founded in 1998 by Peter Hayes (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Robert Levon Been (vocals, bass, guitar), and Nick Jago (drums).
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is considered an
alternative rock or garage rock band. They are straightforward and stripped
down in most of their songs. Fault Line, the song posted, is simply beautiful
in my estimation.
I would classify myself as a “non-kinetic” daredevil. I’m not the type to launch my motorcycle off a precipice or try to catch a bullet in my teeth. My daredevil stunts are steeped in the horticultural end of the spectrum. Put plainly, I allow poisonous plants to grow along the edge of my back deck.
In particular, I have allowed a bittersweet
nightshade to clamber about and flop down onto the deck itself. For those
unfamiliar, tomatoes and peppers are also members of the nightshade family. The
bittersweet nightshade is another one of those exotic invaders from Eurasia. As
far as thriving, they favor damp locations.
I find the plant quite attractive in all stages of
growth, but, sadly, all parts of this plant are highly toxic to humans, dogs,
cats, and many other animals. Also, this plant is a scoundrel that will overrun
a flower garden if you allow it.
But I wanted to push the outer edge of the
envelope, so I let this one run this year. This is what non-kinetic daredevils
do.
—Mitchell Hegman
She thinks that taking bubble baths is far more important and productive than watching political conventions. To date, history has not disproven her.
—Mitchell
Hegman
Quietly, and largely without notice, the bottom is dropping out on us as a species. On this one we could learn something from rabbits.
Humans
are having fewer children, and in much of the world the birthrate has fallen
below the level necessary to replace the existing population. That matters
because our economic systems were built on the assumption that there would
always be another generation coming along behind us. Retirement systems,
pensions, health care, tax bases and much of the ordinary machinery of commerce
depend upon a sufficiently large working population supporting a smaller
retired population. As the proportion of old people grows and the proportion of
working-age people shrinks, the arithmetic gets progressively less friendly.
We
can compensate with immigration, automation, increased productivity and people
working longer, but none of these changes the basic arithmetic. Fewer people
eventually means fewer workers, fewer consumers and fewer people available to
do the work. The United Nations projects that the world's population will peak
at roughly 10.3 billion in the 2080s and then decline. Rabbits, meanwhile,
appear to have avoided the problem entirely. They just keep making more
rabbits.
I
have posted a very short but powerful video offering one man’s explanation for
at least part of the reason this is occurring.
Living in Montana is not for everybody. This especially applies to a host of exotic plants. Honestly, it’s a narrow range of plants that can survive our long months of winter, replete with arctic impulses and their sub-zero temperatures.
We
can lull some of these soft-natured plants into growing here by providing space
in places such as our sunroom. But even the sunroom trick fails from time to
time. Perhaps our low humidity squeezes them a bit too hard. Or the intense and
unrelenting midsummer sun slaps others silly.
Now
enter a bird of paradise stage right. The plant kind, I mean. After brief
deliberations, Desiree and I had a “bird” shipped here. We immediately unpacked
the thing and placed it in the sunroom.
Not
to put too fine a point on it, the plant gradually shriveled and died as an
upright stick.
We now have a stick of paradise.
—Mitchell
Hegman
Listed today is a run of possible outcomes for following your first instinct:
—Mitchell
Hegman
The narrow mountain valley in which my cabin is located forces the sun to work for proper access. In the morning, the sun must clamber up the eastern flanks of the mountains before peering in. In the evening, it must hang on for as long as possible before descending the west slopes and finally setting. But in the rarified minutes immediately after cresting the mountains above us in the morning and just before slipping away in the evening, the most extraordinary event takes place. In these fleeting minutes, bands of sunlight extend long across the forest floor alongside hard shadow.
The
light ignites all the colors and details amid the understory and sends all
manner of birds and insects strobing through the bands.
In
these brief stretches of time, both the fragility and strength of the forest
are on full display. I love no other time of day better.
—Mitchell
Hegman
Held between my hands, my face feels thin as a comb.
And
cold.
I’ve
been thinking about All the Dead Dears, the uneasy poem Sylvia Plath
penned following a visit to the Archaeological Museum in Cambridge. The poem
details a stone coffin of the fourth century A.D. containing the skeletons of a
woman, a mouse, and a shrew. The ankle bone of the woman has been slightly
gnawed. Plath’s lines make it clear she found no closure in death.
Consider:
Sylvia Plath, unhappy in the constant squall of her own too-sharp thoughts,
suicided at the age of thirty.
Where
do my indecent, my own morose thoughts go after knocking at my door? Do they
scurry off to cower in a corner like a mouse or a shrew, waiting for a chance
to rush back and gnaw at my ankle before we enter our bruised eternity?
—Mitchell
Hegman
Following is another modest list of my thoughts and attributes:
—Mitchell
Hegman
You spend the first three-quarters of your life gathering and binding stuff together, and then you retire and spend the last quarter watching everything unbind again.
—Mitchell
Hegman
On an average year, something between 300,000 and 500,000 acres in Montana end up scorched by wildfires. In 2017, Montana recorded 1.4 million acres burned, which is the most acreage lost to wildfires in a single modern recorded year in state history (not accounting for the historic Great Fire of 1910, which burned roughly 3 million acres across Montana and Idaho).
Worse
than this, fires have the capability to sweep through the most modern of
cities. Just this year, a fire ravaged a neighborhood in Spokane, Washington.
One
leg of prevention is controlled fires, more aptly tagged as “prescribed burns,”
owing to the fact that fires can be only marginally controlled, and calling
them controlled is a bit over-optimistic.
Yesterday,
a prescribed burn was initiated behind Mount Helena. It’s jarring to be driving
around Helena while smoke billows up from a wide sweep of land just beyond the
city.
Hopefully,
the wind will remain settled and this fire remains only a half-threat. I have
posted a photograph Desiree captured as we drove through town.
—Mitchell
Hegman
Yesterday,
three of my neighbor’s longhorn cattle broke through a section of fence and
made their way in the general direction of my place. Fortunately, Tad, my
lakeshore neighbor, caught wind of this. Before long, we joined a couple people
from the place next door and hazed the cattle back to where they belonged.
I’m
no cowboy, and only a few minutes of pushing cattle will cure most people,
including me, of wanting to be one. At the same time, I must admit, longhorns
look rather cool under the Big Sky.
.jpg)
—Mitchell Hegman
