Up the Mountain, Down Through the Wildflowers

That girl and I spent Monday at the cabin.  While there, I completed my “homemade” kitchen light (see the photograph below).  That girl finished installing blinds on a window and prepared for some extended stays this summer.

After finishing all of that early in the afternoon, we drove the Forest Service road up into the high stack of mountains above our little valley.  The road soon turned rugged and impassable to all but four-wheel-drive vehicles.  I switched my truck into four-wheel-drive and crawled up the flanks of the Continental Divide—up the mountains through shattered remnants of blow-down trees that had slashed across the road and only recently been cleared by crews with chainsaws.

At the top, we walked to the edge of a clearing to take in the snowcapped mountains across the Blackfoot Valley.

With my truck in four-low, we trickled back down through cuts in the mountain stone, pine forests, green grass, and wildflowers.

Wildflowers are the thing.  I have trouble driving past them.  I have an innate need to stop for a closer look.  That girl and I must have stopped well over a dozen times so we could scramble from the truck and poke at the wildflowers.  Photographing flowers is among my favorite pastimes.

Posted are a couple photographs of blue virgin’s bower.  Though not as showy as some flowers, they have a striking shape.  They range in the mountain chains extending from New Mexico to Montana.  Also posted is a mixed patch of lupine and paintbrush, and, last but not least, a fairyslipper orchid.  Though not much larger than your thumbnail, fairyslippers are ever a show-stopper.

--Mitchell Hegman

All Signs

I’ve been adding things up:

—Always on the go.

—Forgetting important appointments.

—Running in place.

—Neglecting my own health.

According to an advertisement I recently saw, I’m a busy young mother with too much to do!

--Mitchell Hegman

The Wall of Birdsong

Each morning now, as first light flutters up against the mountains to our east, I am brought awake by the collective of songbirds singing outside my house.  Though potentially discordant, with trilling meadowlarks upstaging chickadees and vesper sparrows lilting alongside bluebird’s twittering through their songs of dawn, the birds somehow manage a loud, sweet symphony.

I often remain in my bed for a few minutes, listening to the birdsong choir.  My house is just remote enough that beyond the immediate birds singing here there are other, more distant birds, singing.  Only rarely does extraneous noise bite into the morning music.

It satisfies me to listen.

This morning, as I lay near the open window of my bedroom, listening, I thought about the famous (now infamous) music producer, Phil Spector.  Spector, in shaping some of the greatest rock hits of the 1960s, created what he called a “wall of sound.”   In his own words, the music was “a case of augmenting, augmenting.”  Spector added strings, woodwind, and brass to rock songs.  He saturated every second of a song.  In the studio, Spector might overlay several instruments to create one sound.  He used multiple microphones at once.

The birds are something like that.  The first hour is a wall of birdsong.

--Mitchell Hegman

Wrong Number

I must admit, in some ways I miss our old telephone land lines.  I don’t miss the oversized, permanently tethered technology itself.  I don’t miss the clamoring ringtones.

I miss the randomness of wrong numbers.

Back then, because you had to dial numbers, rather than select them from a menu, you often dialed and received calls meant for someone else.  Inverting two numbers was common.

Years ago, on a fairly regular basis, a pair of inverted numbers from out there someplace often landed phone calls for “Rachel” on my phone.

I received enough of these calls that I eventually worked out a way to answer when I picked up the phone and someone asked for Rachel: “I’m sorry, Rachel is not here.  She just left.  But did you hear the good news?   She’s pregnant with sextuplets!  Goodbye.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Solving the Beer Problem

Few things fit together more naturally than metal music and beer.  This has been proven annually in Wacken, Germany.  Every August, the Wacken Open Air music festival attracts some 75,000 heavy metal music devotees and enough bands to keep playing for three days.

The problem has been beer.

Not enough beer, I mean.

On average, over the course of the three-day event, each festival attendee consumes more than a gallon of beer.  This year, festival organizers completed a permanent infrastructure project to solve the beer shortage problem.  A four-mile underground beer pipeline was installed to provide a constant source of beer.  The pipeline operates with enough pressure to pour six beers in six seconds.

In the unlikely event some metal festival goers want water, a pipeline for water was also routed to the festivals grounds.

--Mitchell Hegman

Photo: Wacken Open Air

Coffee

Here is my morning thus far:

My television will not output sound.  I can see talking heads, but they are silent.

A mouse got inside my house and has been flinging itself along the baseboards of my living room and den.  After watching the mouse dart behind my entertainment center, I located my remaining 20 pounds of housecat, scooped him up, and placed him at the spot where the mouse disappeared behind the entertainment center.  He immediately freaked out and trotted off to the door and meowed to get out.

I had to shut down my undersink water filtration system because the flow control started to screech and moan.  Seriously, it did.  Sounded like an entire haunted house.

My internet service is intermittent.  Yesterday, I placed a call to my provider.  Seems I need a new wireless router.

It has been a rough first hour over here.

Coffee…at least I have that going for me!

--Mitchell Hegman

It’s a Small World

I just watched a big red ant go limping past my left foot.  The big red and was limping because a small red ant had clamped onto one of the big red ant’s rear legs with its mandibles and was clinging on like a sort of living ball and chain.

Honestly, the big red ant didn’t seem bothered in the least by the little black ant.  Off to the far horizon limped the big red ant, dragging along the small black ant. 

Almost human.

--Mitchell Hegman