Genes

A man is not free that knows his genetic make-up.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Little Girl

I once read an online article about a little girl who was very afraid.  I suppose most people would not find anything unusual about a little girl being afraid, but this little girl was only ten and dying from an aggressive form of cancer.   This filled her mind with fear. 

She had one last wish.

As we get older, some of us might develop alarmingly elaborate last wishes—dancehall nights and gambling with stacks of pure gold bricks, maybe a month-long trek to the Arctic.  The little girl, though, expressed a most simple wish.

She just wanted to see her daddy.

Her daddy was serving the last year of a five-year prison sentence for drug charges.  She did not understand the drug charges and did not care about them.  The little girl wanted to see her daddy.  This was her only wish.

We are a nation of laws.  These laws generally serve us well but move slowly.  Some of these laws stood as a wall between the little girl and her daddy.   Finally, one day, the laws moved and allowed the little girl’s daddy to leave the prison so he could spend twenty minutes with the girl.  By that time, however, the little girl had slipped into a coma.  She perished soon after and never did see her daddy.

--Mitchell Hegman

 

Music

Better yet that the whole of this life is based on music.  The newborn child tolling like a brass bell in rough seas.  The elderly humming softy in warm squares of light.   The creeks strumming through tall timber.  The wind sounding like deep horns where sweeping against cities.  And small yellow birds with sharp songs rising far above all else.

--Mitchell Hegman

More of the Crazies

One more photograph from the sunrise over the Crazy Mountains on Friday morning.

--Mitchell Hegman

Up Crazy, Down Crazy

Legend holds that The Crazy Mountains were originally called the “Crazy Woman Mountains” by the Crow Tribe living in the area. The Crow named them that for a “crazy” white woman who lived all alone amid the stark peaks following the murder of her settler family by marauding Natives during the early migration westward.  This story is used in "Jeremiah Johnson,” the movie starring Robert Redford.

The Crazies are my favorite mountain range.  They are, put in simple terms, an explosion of stone and timber—an up-blast from the Yellowstone River and the floor of the plains.  Nearly every time I drive near the Crazies, I find that I must stop, climb out from the car, and take them in for a bit. These are powerful mountains.  They are wild to this day, having one of the last healthy populations of wolverines left to this water, stone, and grass landscape of ours.

Up crazy, those mountains.

I would like to end with that, but cannot.  This is a down crazy world, too.  Yesterday, one of my dearest friends came home to a cold house.  Normally, the house is warm because his live-in girlfriend of many years faithfully tends to the woodstove because she craves the heat. 

Odd, the chill.

My friend called out his girlfriend’s name to no response.  Assuming she had fallen into a deep sleep during one of her normal afternoon naps, my friend walked back to the bedroom.  He saw her there and touched the skin of her leg.

He knew instantly.  He knew even before he saw the pistol in the bedding.

Down crazy, that woman.

--Mitchell Hegman

(Today, I am going to help my friend rid the house of that fucking bed.)

The Crazy Mountains

I took this photograph yesterday on my way to Billings.  Not a particularly striking photo, but the “feel” of the drive between Ringling and Wilsall, Montana is expressed properly, I think.

--Mitchell Hegman

Challenges

Life is full of challenges, and sometimes they are running for the presidency of these United States.

--Mitchell Hegman