Five Minutes

The city of Helena, Montana is virtually jammed into the Rocky Mountains.  Old mining camp neighborhoods and new luxury homes have been pasted like postage stamps onto the mountains foothills and mountains.  In much of what we call the “South Hills,” the city stops quite abruptly and the wilds begin outright.

My friend Jeff lives in the South Hills only five minutes (literally) from downtown Helena.  I have been helping him with some wiring on his house recently.  Just to give you an idea of how rapidly the landscape swings to the wilds, I have posted a picture I took little more than a stones-throw from Jeff’s house.

Five minutes from downtown Helena.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sunset, November 5, 2012

I tried to ignore the sunset yesterday evening as I sat in my house watching the talking heads on television dicing-up these United States and the electoral votes as we head into what will surely be a close presidential election.  Almost every time someone attempted to explain why Obama would sweep this region or Romney would surge in that zip code I thought about a line from a Richard Hugo poem: 

“My kind of man could never be president, only a target for the common cold…”

Perhaps not exact, but something near that.

I tried to ignore the sunset, but the colors kept spilling into my house from outside and the talking heads all started to merge together into one big mumbling blob in my mind.   I thought to myself: Mitch, your camera is sitting ten feet away from you.  When I looked over to my camera, sitting there on my dining room table, I saw that the sunset colors were even beginning to stain the black camera body a little red.

Yep.  I grow weak when you start to throw colors at me.

Here is my picture.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Few Impractical Facts

·         The word “flicker” is spelled without using the letter “m.”

·         A wrapper can wrap a rapper just as easily as a rapper can rap a wrapper.

·         Bowling balls emerge from the bowling ball factory without holes.

·         The word “hydroponic” spelled backwards becomes “cinopordhy,” and is without meaning.

·         The American Robin cannot fly backward except for the first two seconds immediately following when they crash into a window.

--Mitchell Hegman

Three Thoughts in Two Minutes

·         Six days beyond Superstorm Sandy, people—including my daughter—are finally returning to their New York City apartments with power and some evidence of sanity restored.  On Staten Island, however, many people don’t have places left to return to.  They have only a floor of sticks and mud and a house of clouds and wind.

·         One summer, back in my preteens, I dove into Canyon Ferry Reservoir while wearing my prescription glasses.  My older, almost-cousin, dove in a bit later, wearing goggles, and frogged down to the bottom of the lake to retrieve them.  We were both pretty happy about that.  Three years later he dove into shallow water in the same lake and broke his neck.  He ended up an angry and frail quadriplegic from that dive.  I have not been swimming in that lake since.

 

·         The fact that I observed a dozen Canada geese flying northward over my house does not mean that they are not flying south for winter.

--Mitchell Hegman

Stopped

Though my wife has been gone from me for something near a year and a half, I find myself at one point or another, during the course of each day, thinking of her.  I think about her every single time I pump fuel into her car (because she always hounded me about twisting the gas-cap until it clicked several times).  Walking past the room that was once her craft space is often a trigger for thought.  Sometimes, out of nowhere, her smile appears in my mind.

I experience one or the other of two distinct emotions when I think of Uyen…I am either overcome with sorrow or I find that I am happy to recall a light or even mundane moment we shared.

Yesterday, as I gazed up at the sky-wide flow of clownishly over-inflated clouds my thoughts somehow turned to Uyen.  I thought about the day we worked together constructing the masonry piers that now serve as entry posts to my drive.  That day, as yesterday, was filled with afternoon warmth and exquisite clouds.   I swear, as I stood there watching, the clouds stopped moving entirely.  I mean, the whole sky just stopped moving!  And they remained stock still until I finally smiled and let Uyen go one more time.

--Mitchell Hegman

Yacht Club

An interesting fact: The Hilo Yacht Club, an oceanfront property located on the rainy side of Hawaii’s big island, has been in existence since 1913.  A more interesting fact: The Hilo Yacht Club does not now and has not ever entertained a single yacht on premises, though it does harbor a really nice bar and great dining.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sunrise, October 31, 2012

Only on the rarest of occasions will you find me going someplace without my camera.  I have it in my automobile when I go to work, when I drive across the valley to see friends, and even when I go to town for grocery shopping. 

My theory regarding the constant habit (sometimes annoyance) of carrying my camera is that you never know when an image or moment worth capturing will present itself to you.  I am always admonishing other people for not having their camera when I catch them without theirs.  Only a few days ago a friend called me and said, “You are right…I should have had my camera,” and then went on to tell me about a missed opportunity for photographing fall colors against a spectacular blue sky.

I am posting two of the reasons I take my camera to work.  I stopped along my way to Helena yesterday to capture this sunrise over Hauser Lake.  I purposefully flashed the portrait-style photograph to highlight the grass.

 

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman