Twins

Saturday morning. I wake, pull on some clothes, and then trudge out to sit on my sofa. My three cats gather in front of me and we take turns staring at each other in silence. My friend Kevin and I drank wine and beer late into yesterday evening. I didn’t get drunk, but imbibed enough to achieve a sizeable headache. We are widower twins, me and Kevin, just trying to find our way to an uncertain middle-aged future. Clearly, the beer and wine is of little help.

“What if we have thirty years of all-alone left ahead of us?” I asked Kevin toward the end of yesterday evening. No firm answer on that. Click your glasses of merlot together. Drink. I thought about Grover Jones, the ancient widower who lived in our neighborhood when we were kids. Grover, by then, drove a twenty-year-old clunker and had allowed the ragweed and lambsquarters to crawl up the sides of his ramshackle house. He drove like maniac. Spoke to nobody.

I expected to find Kevin on my sofa this morning. He agreed not to drive home, having drunk far beyond the headache level. I heard him shouting out that he loved me a while after I crashed into my bed. I heard Dido and Adele on my stereo when, later, I woke just long enough to flop around to a more comfortable position. Now, only Kevin’s shoes and empty beer cooler remain at my front door. His van has vanished from the prairie parking spot in front of my house.

Kevin is a brilliant, wounded man. I should worry, but I think we are going to be okay. Really, I think so.

Eventually, I open some windows and allow the chill air to sweep in around me. The cats decide to stare out the windows as the intensifying glow of day spreads honey-colored over the bunchgrass outside. Honking and chattering, Canada geese flap just overtop my house on their way to the lake. I wonder where Kevin has gone off to. I wonder when he left.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sunrise, September 9, 2011

I left Billings (for Helena) at 4:30 in the morning.  Just before dropping into Deep Creek Canyon, between White Sulphur Springs and Townsend, I stopped to look back.   I took this photogragh.

--Mitchell Hegman

Fill in the Blank

Without my dear friends and family, I would be ___________________.

--Mitchell Hegman

Moon (Part I), Moon (Part II)

Moon (Part I)

The other night, the moon, tinted a faded-rose red from forestfire smoke, managed to hoist only half of itself above the valley. The valley floor sparkled with distant lights from homes, but the smoke obscured the mountains. And I wondered of the moon: half empty or half full?

How does a man judge the moon? Am I “judgment impaired,” having lived these last months alone with three cats that only semi-like me? Half full? Or half empty? Upon what basis would a man make such a verdict? Do we allow loss to define everything? Am I, by this calculus, now half the man I was? Isn’t it true that the moon exerts the greatest tidal pull when full, that the pull wanes with the diminishing display? Do we judge by light or do we judge by shadow?

I stood at my bay window.

Moon (Part II)

The other night, as I stood long at my bay window, thinking about how the dull light shows no wounds on me, I saw a lone mule deer doe tip-toe across the home-spangled expanse, her way lighted a deep red and half-full moon.

--Mitchell Hegman

Mule Deer (Hard Shadows)

In photography, even the best of subjects have no value without proper lighting. A clear sunny day, while pleasant, usually makes for flat and washed-out photographs. The best sunrise or sunset might last only ten minutes. The sun seems conspiring against photographers a great deal of the time—landing always in the wrong spot or hiding out when you most require light. In some instances, though, you can convert the very thing that will render most subjects as dull or meaningless into the feature that binds the shot together. I chanced upon these deer while driving to work one morning. With the rising sun behind them, I had only hard and featureless shadow to work with. Here is one photograph from a series of photographs I took that morning.

--Mitchell Hegman

New Maxim

Take every challenge presented and try any new thing, no matter the risk. Or, at the very least, watch my friend Kevin try after a few drinks and see if he gets injured.


Note to Kevin: I love you, man.

--Mitchell Hegman

Again

Again, I wake to full darkness, but cannot force myself back to sleep. Somewhere in the night, a cat has curled into a lump on the pillow beside me and purrs ever so softly. How many days in a row has this been so? Dozens? Hundreds? By constant observation, I have come to know the precise spot where the sun first emerges amid the blue folds of the mountains. I know the exact pine that brushes against its ruby face. Today, I render my decision. One day, I will climb that mountain to stand there with the tree. One day, I will reach out and hold the sun in my hands.

--Mitchell Hegman