Stuck With a Memory

I struggle to recall names. I can’t remember why I go from room to room. Yet I recall with perfect clarity the long-past midnight hour, many years ago, when my two cats and I chased a mouse from kitchen to living room and back again, me with a large cooking pot into which I eventually scooped the mouse.

Of what value is this clear memory when I land in my kitchen today having forgotten my purpose?

—Mitchell Hegman

The Good Mother

When I arrived at the cabin on Saturday, I ejected from the truck and snuck through the firs and pines to shut down the game camera and retrieve the memory card. I took only a few paces before something stopped me in my tracks. A ruffed grouse basically flung itself at my feet and then began wobbling about with flared wings, acting as if wounded.

I know this routine. I was witnessing a good mother at work. She wanted to garner my attention and lead me away from her babies.

“I got you,” I assured the grouse. “I just need to get to the game camera.” Upon taking two more steps, I saw her tiny babies popcorning through the tall grass twenty or so feet to my left. After seeing them, I purposefully drifted to my left and stopped.

“Gather your kids,” I said evenly. “I’ll wait here for a bit.”

I allowed Mother Grouse to press on ahead of me so she could gather her chicks and ghost back into the forest understory.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Raven’s Demands

Apparently, I've done something to stir the local ravens into action. Whenever I'm outside the house watering trees, splitting wood for the coming winter, or merely wandering around having conversations with the flowers, they soon appear around me. A half dozen of them, perching on the solar array, swirling in a wide circle nearby, or settling like black flags in the nearby pines. All of them croaking or cawing incessantly, as if they've just realized I sometimes call them greasy birds.

Or might they be voicing demands? Maybe they want a raven-only birdbath with a decent view of the lake below. Perhaps they're insisting I wear paisley print shirts again (which I am willing to do). Or could it be they're urging me to be less friendly to snakes? And sometimes they sound like gravelly kazoos, which confounds me completely.

I don't grasp ravenspeak. I do, however, now understand why little birds so often mob them to chase them the hell away.

—Mitchell Hegman

Relearning a Lesson

I relearned a very important lesson yesterday. Perhaps you remember this one: you can’t walk through a doorway without first opening the door.

—Mitchell Hegman

More Phone Apps I would Like

Desiree and I recently upgraded to new smartphones. They came preloaded with a swath of apps and games we will never use. Vita Mahjong is one example. But that got me thinking about some apps I would enjoy having on my phone. Following is a list of those:

• A music app that converts songs you don't like into your choice of Stairway to Heaven or Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
• An app that locates the nearest bathroom.
• An app that emits a sound that will make ravens shut the hell up.
• A metal-cutting laser app.
• An app that remembers people's names for me.
• An app that makes hurt go away.
• An app that automatically slays spambots.
• An app that universally changes "creek" to "crick," the proper pronunciation for those of us who grew up in East Helena, Montana.
• An app that turns political arguments into recipes.

—Mitchell Hegman

Forgetting

"Take without forgetting, and give without remembering.”

—Bryant H. McGill

 

"I took revenge on hardship from my earlier life by forgetting it.”

—Alija Izetbegovic

 

"Don't blame the child for forgetting lessons; make the lessons unforgettable.”

—Sonam Wangchuk

The Blanketflower

In July of 1806, Meriwether Lewis crossed the Continental Divide near what is now the small town of Lincoln, Montana. There, on a hillside less than 10 miles from my house, he stopped long enough to collect a blanketflower. That pressed plant eventually became the type specimen for Gaillardia aristata, the scientific reference for the species. It also goes by the name firewheel.

Today, blanketflowers still bloom amid the grass in open spaces around my cabin. They also flourish in the gravelly ground just outside the bay window at my house.

Proud natives, these.

On his exploratory trek through what is now Montana, Meriwether Lewis had been charged with taking note of all new flora and fauna encountered along the way. Clearly, our showy, mid-season gaillardia screamed for his attention.

Today, the same flowers call for the attention of roving bumblebees outside my prairie home. And it seems fitting that, to test the camera on the new smartphone I brought into service just yesterday, I chose to photograph our showy native flower.

Not bad for a simple plant growing in gravel.

A Blanketflower at My House

—Mitchell Hegman 

To Sustain Me

On those occasions when I really need to dig deep to find a reason to be grateful, I have one ever-present item to sustain me: wood ticks find me very attractive.

—Mitchell Hegman

Desiree Setting Forms

I have always said that working with concrete is 100% bullwork.

Consider: It begins with earthmoving and ends with pouring concrete weighing in at 4,050-ish pounds per yard.

Desiree and I spent part of yesterday setting up to pour a concrete pad outside the lower-level entry to our cabin. After clearing out the vegetation in the allotted spot, we constructed forms and staked them solidly into the ground. The pour will require something near ¾ yard (3,037 pounds) of concrete, which we plan to mix ourselves in a borrowed portable mixer. Desiree has never done this sort of job, but I assured her we will be working our proverbial asses off.

I will say, up to this point, Desiree has deeply impressed me with her good old-fashioned savvy and work ethic when it comes to construction projects. She jumped right in on setting the forms and even made a couple of thoughtful suggestions along the way.

In a week or two, we will go for the "pour," four letters not being nearly enough to describe the grinding labor involved.

Desiree Setting Forms

—Mitchell Hegman

Crushed Shipping

If plants competed for the title of "Most Useful Living Thing," moringa would be a strong contender, if not the winner outright. It grows fast, tolerates abuse and poor soil, and produces edible leaves, flowers, and pods. Sometimes called the drumstick tree, moringa is native to warm regions of Asia.

The real appeal of moringa lies in its nutritional value. The leaves are rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and protein, more than one might expect from something that resembles spinach. Around the world, the leaves are eaten fresh, cooked into soups and stews, dried for tea, or ground into powder.

Desiree grew up eating moringa, which grew in abundance around her home province. Given this, she wanted to grow a moringa tree here. Sadly, this plant has one notable weakness: cold. A Montana winter would dispatch a moringa tree without a second thought. Fortunately, our sunroom would serve as a suitable host. With this in mind, Desiree ordered a moringa sapling. Yesterday, I picked up a parcel containing the young tree.

It's a good thing moringa can tolerate abuse because the postal service delivered precisely that. The package arrived crushed. Once we got the poor thing home, Desiree planted it and propped it upright. I captured a photograph of the moringa alongside a Cold Smoke beer as a reference for size.

Crushed Shipping

The Moringa Planted in Our Sunroom

—Mitchell Hegman

Taking the Alley

Yesterday, I drove down a long alley just off Broadway Street in Helena. I've always found alleys fascinating. As a kid growing up in East Helena, cutting through them was often my first option as I traveled across town.

Alleys offered the raw and ragged side of life. There you found overflowing and wholly abused garbage cans, old cars with their entrails hanging out, skittish cats, scraps of wood, and all manner of untended spaces where tall weeds could grow.

But treasure might also be found: recyclable bottles, yellow rose bushes overtaking leaning sheds, twisty metal stuff I liked, exotic beer cans for my growing collection, mirrors, and discarded junk I could use or take apart just for fun.

The jungly, narrow alley off Broadway did not disappoint. I negotiated past yellow roses in full bloom, stacks of weathered lumber, a strange bench seat made of wooden slats, leafy places where city deer bed down, one disemboweled truck, and a scattering of fly-away birds.

I'm sharing a photograph of the alley so you might enjoy it along with me. Every alley keeps a few treasures and secrets for those willing to take the long way through town.

The Alley Off Broadway

—Mitchell Hegman

Navigating Through Everyday Life

My wife has this one, I want to say, annoying habit that makes my navigation through everyday life treacherous at times. I’m referring, of course, to her ability to accurately remember everything I say or do for the long term.

—Mitchell Hegman

Snowball

In the softest light of the early evening, as waves spilled the last of their silver against the shore, I found Snowball, my neighbor Kevin’s black cat, on the concrete of my boat ramp down at the lakefront.

“Oh, hell…”

She was dead, stretched into a final pose among pinecones and thin strands of aquatic weed that had washed ashore and threaded themselves together.

Snowball made a good run for an outdoor cat. Something near 21 years. Though a couple of years ago, she lost half of her tail. Kevin told me she’d been missing for a couple of days. And she’d refused both breakfast and loving the last time he saw her.

Cats do that at the end of their days.

I walked up to Kevin’s place to tell him. “I guess you’ll want to do something with her,” I tendered.

A few minutes later, we were standing over Snowball. Her eyes were open, but dull and locked in a thousand-mile stare.

“I’m glad we found her,” I said. “It’s better to know. She was a good girl.”

“She was my friend,” Kevin responded. “One of my best friends.”

Kevin gathered up the cat and slipped her into a heavy plastic bag that once held salt for a water-softening system. And while it may not seem plausible, this was done with grace.

“I’m sorry, Kevin.”

Kevin acknowledged me wordlessly.

Some things don’t long for words.

Snowball

—Mitchell Hegman

Questions That Keep Me Awake at Night

• Why would anyone be mean to a turtle?
• If I was abducted by aliens, would they have a bathroom for me to use?
• Why is water wet?
• If ghosts walk through walls, why don't they fall through floors?

—Mitchell Hegman

Among the Fallen Giants

The two primary agents for busting down an old conifer forest for recycling and renewal are wildfire and wind. Either of these can be jaw-droppingly violent.

Wildfires are the primary agents at work here. They are ubiquitous and lurid, given the clawing flames and billowing smoke. Some are utterly destructive, leaving nothing but charred bits smoldering in their wake.

But wind can do in moments what takes a fire hours or days. A microburst can leave nothing standing in its swath. Neither trees 20 years old nor 200 years old can withstand such powerful gusts. Whole sections of forest might be uprooted and laid flat to languish and die with root balls exposed, still clutching clumps of earth and stone.

For whatever reason, mathematical or otherwise, the forests all around my cabin have recently suffered a series of devastating windstorms. The property owner adjacent to my cabin had to chainsaw his way in to his place after a storm downed over a dozen huge fir trees several weeks ago. Yesterday, on a drive through the mountains, we encountered hundreds upon many hundreds of giants that were recently ripped from the ground and unceremoniously pitched down. For several miles we crept along, negotiating our way through places where huge trees had been wrenched from the earth and flung down across the road. Somebody had opened the road long before our arrival, but in places there was barely room for us to pass. I’m sharing images of two places where we were forced to squeak through fallen titans.

A Behemoth Tree in the Road

Trees Across the Road

—Mitchell Hegman

Events: June 14, 2026

Desiree and I had a lovely day at the cabin yesterday. To begin, we found another photograph of the moose and her baby on our game camera. This one captured the pair in perfect clarity as they pranced in front of the cabin. Later, while trekking across the mountainside immediately behind the cabin, I found an edible puffball (for a fungi-loving someone other than me), one worthy of being posed beside a can of Cold Smoke beer.

The best occurrence, though, was finding the upper elevations of our mountain acreage absolutely awash with wildflowers. The lupine and arrowleaf balsamroot stood two feet tall across the mountainside and were on full display. While lupine may not be desirable for grazing animals, they do put on a righteous purple show.

Moose on the Game Camera

Puffball

Desiree Amid the Wildflowers

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Walt Whitman Said

 

— "I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.”

— "Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”

— “Be curious, not judgmental.”

Fledging the Loud Way

For some years, ravens have been nesting in the bull pine near my property. Yesterday, two of this year's brood attempted to fledge and ended up stranded in a tree immediately below my house for much of the day. For the entire time, a group of adult ravens hung around monitoring, protecting, and encouraging the fledgling birds as they hopped from branch to branch, testing their wings.

Here's the thing: both the newbie ravens and the adults spent the entire time cawing and croaking. The little ones often made return calls that sounded like someone thwacking short lengths of dried bamboo.

In other words, the entire event was utter cacophony.

I stepped out onto my deck several times and, to no avail, "encouraged" the young birds to fly off. Eventually, the birds in the tree flew off, towing the adults along with them.

An Adult Raven on My Fence

—Mitchell Hegman

In the Names of Grass

Timothy does not flourish

where blue grama and needle-and-thread hold sway.

In disturbed ground

rise cheatgrass and rough fescue.

Give to the open sun

crested wheatgrass and big bluestem.

Along windswept slopes

gather foxtail and awnless brome.

For the sake of name:

orchardgrass and slender wheatgrass.

Foxtail

—Mitchell Hegman

A Capture from the Learning Curve

We recently picked up two more game cameras. Before leaving the cabin last weekend, we had to install batteries and set both up so we could strap them to some trees in the woods.

As with any new electronic device, there is a learning curve to be negotiated before successfully inputting the date, time, and settings you prefer. In this case, the camera captured a slew of wonky images in various directions as we manipulated it while trying to input our preferences, creating something of a permanent record of our swerving about on the learning curve.

I’m sharing one of the captures of the cabin ceiling and Desiree’s forehead. Hopefully, the camera does better in the woods.

A Forehead Capture

—Mitchell Hegman

Game Camera Capture #2 and #3

On June 7, our game camera captured two images of a critter sniffing at the lens. Unfortunately, the animal approached so close to the camera that the images produced are both unfocused and washed out.

Before you take a guess at what this critter might be, you need to first understand that the camera is affixed to a fir tree at about 4½ feet off the ground.

I am of a mind that the too-close encounter features a bear.

Capture #2

Capture #3

—Mitchell Hegman

Game Camera Capture #1

Of all the things in the wild, seeing mothers with their new babies is the most exciting. As good fortune would have it, our game camera caught a moose and her little one crossing in front of our cabin on June 6.

I’m sharing the game camera capture here today.

Enjoy.

A Moose and Her Little One

—Mitchell Hegman

Looking for Something Unusual

I’m looking for something unusual in the den,

which is absurd,

for there is nothing.

The quartz crystals will not suddenly sprout wings

and flutter off, abandoning the fat petrified wood specimens.

I shouldn’t expect the staid shelves cradling my books

to have changed elevation.

It’s unlikely I will discover my wife won the lotto

and piled the winnings on my desk.

Our wildflower seed stock shan’t spring forth

from the right-hand drawer.

But I look anyway

because I haven’t found anything rare anywhere else.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Rat’s Nest

As a kid, I could tangle up fishing line on an open-faced reel with the best of them. My worst rat's nests, as we termed them, required my (generally frustrated) father to undo the mess. Often, line would need to be cut and the rod and line would require re-rigging.

I am compelled to announce that this weekend, my rat's nesting ability was equaled by a nine-year-old guest at our lakefront. He produced several noteworthy tangles while practicing his casting and retrieval abilities before cranking up the granddaddy of all nests in his line. The final tangle required the efforts of three adults to unravel it.

Well done, young man.

Three Adults Undoing a Rat’s Nest

—Mitchell Hegman

Here and Gone

Here: Beer on ice, purple orchid, American robins in the duff.

Gone: Grandparents, mother, father, sister.

 

Here: Political chicanery, baby moose, clear gemstones.

Gone: Robin Williams, the cats at my feet, incandescent light bulbs.

 

Here: Wanting to save all the songbirds, malicious bots, sweet onions.

Gone: Frank’s Place bar, staying out all night, pay phones.

 

Here: All that I need.

Gone: All that I let go.

 

—Mitchell Hegman

Secure

Two of our future leaders, ages seven and nine, are poking sticks in an anthill just to stir up the colony. We can now be assured that our repeating history is secure.

—Mitchell Hegman

Justified

I witnessed two murders yesterday. One near my house. The other down at the lakefront. I think both can be classified as justified. They were both the result of creatures just making an honest living.

The murder near the house involved a juvenile cat-faced spider. I happened by the spider’s web just as a hapless fly smacked into, and stuck to, a couple of strands. The spider instantly flung itself upon the fly and, with the dexterity and speed of a pastry chef, wrapped its prey into the silky spider equivalent of an apple turnover.

Later, while mowing the grass at the lakefront, a flash of motion caught my eye. When I swung my attention in that direction, I witnessed, no more than fifty feet from me, an osprey plunge into the shallow water just offshore. The bird emerged from the showy splash of water clutching a keeper-sized walleye. With the fish in its talons, the bird flapped mightily to regain its place in the air above the water before churning off just above the surface of the lake toward the far side.

I try not to anthropomorphize such things. These are not human events, even though I witnessed them. And I know most of us feel nothing in particular when buying steaks and hamburger in pretty little packets, but behind those packages is an impersonal, cold, automated slaughterhouse into which live cattle plodded before being dispatched and converted into “product.”

The spider and raptor were simply making an honest living in broad daylight.

—Mitchell Hegman

On Second Thought

Had I known I would be able to use super glue on anything I wanted (including my own skin) and buy potato chips and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at will, I might have adulted a little earlier.

—Mitchell Hegman

What I Meant to Tell Her

"We've escaped gravity,” I told my woman.

“I don't follow,” she said.

I'd meant to tell her I loved her,

but couldn't lift all the words at once.

 

And when I said we were almost out of milk,

I'd meant to tell her I wanted to adopt a pet.

A small bird or a goldfish would do.

 

Now that we've lapsed into silence,

I'm considering saying this:

“Honey, we just need one more marigold.”

 

—Mitchell Hegman

Classy People

Though we never explicitly discuss this, Desiree and I consider ourselves every bit as classy as the next mixed-culture couple with a cabin at the base of the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains.

Welp, it’s time to reconsider.

Over the weekend, we discovered that our campfire plasticware is mismatched. Our forks are white, while our spoons and knives are clear.

That’s a clear failure (pun intended).

Our Mismatched Plasticware

—Mitchell Hegman