New Snow and a Promise of Sunshine

We have “his” and “hers” channels on television, magazines for people who like to lift weights, and talk radio channels where people yell overtop each other all day long.  You can find stores selling nothing but household appliances, communities where only “seniors” live, and youth groups in almost every church.  We have social media in our ear and at our face 24/7.  We have cell phones, laptops, desktops, iPads, and something blinking in every room.

We have fully electrified, specified, connected, protected, and streamed in.

But on a morning like this, I want nothing more than to drive deep into the mountains, fasten a pair of old-school snowshoes to my boots, and slowly trudge across the white silence of an open meadow making blue holes with my tracks.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

In Measure

On the whole, I think half my problems are the result of me spending a quarter of my time accomplishing only a fifth of what should be done.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

Building: Little Victories

I have always liked building projects.  Though building my own home got a bit rushed and intense at the end, I found the project both enjoyable and immensely satisfying.  I have been steadily working to construct and complete my cabin since 2003.  I work in “flurries” when I am there.

I have learned a lot about construction while doing my various projects.  I regularly reach out to others I know in the trades when I bump into something that confounds me.  Laying out the stairs at my cabin, for example, was a bit much for me.

One aspect I like about construction is that when you get hung up on details in one spot, you can always move to a new spot, make some noise, make a big mess, and produce some kind of progress.  Eventually—maybe after outside advice—you go back and finish the spot where something hung you up.

Actually, finishing a project is not nearly as satisfying to me as the thousand little victories that got me there.  Even today, as I sit writing this, I recall some of the victories in my home's construction twenty-seven years ago: finishing the lighting valance above me, completing the bay window framing.  I recall the day my buddy Bill and I finished joist lay-out for the sunken living room.  When we pulled corner-to-corner measurements to see if the layout was square, we discovered the layout perfect.

I can go from room to room filling my mind with these memories.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

The Man Sitting Beside Me

Spring of this year will mark the 41^st year I have been involved in the electrical industry here in Montana.  I must say, I have enjoyed my entire career.  I sincerely mean that.  I have worked with some of the most generous and intelligent people inhabiting this blue planet.   My union membership provided me with a safe work environment, decent pay, health insurance, excellent training, opportunity, and now—best of all—retirement benefits I will reap within a few months.

I have a story about those benefits.

In May of the long ago year in which I started my electrician’s apprenticeship, I attended my first union meeting.  As luck would have it (bad luck, I assumed at the time), contract negotiations were underway.

The meeting turned somewhat heated.

Well, it all sounded like nonsense to me.   A bunch of young guys stood up and bellowed about putting an upcoming raise “on the check.”  Most insisted they would take care of their own retirement and do better.   A bunch of old guys stood up and urged applying some of the raise to retirement programs—the only certain way to guarantee money will be waiting for you in the end.

I must have looked bored, maybe a bit shell-shocked.  The man sitting beside me (a man somewhere near the age I am now) nudged me.  “You should pay attention to this,” he suggested.  “When you get to be my age, you’ll wish more of every raise went to retirement benefits.”

I didn’t respond to the man, but I never forgot what he said.  Actually, today, what he said very near haunts me.  The closer I near reaping my benefits, the more I think of him and what he told me—the absolute truth of it.  Not more than two days ago, I told this story to a young man before urging him to consider his own retirement plans.  I often urge younger people to think about their retirements.  I am so thankful for all the old timers who caused me to consider mine and who insisted on applying money to retirement programs.  I didn’t even know the man sitting next to me at that meeting, but he was my brother.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

Three Horses, One Man

Three saddled horses stood against the sun for more than an hour.  Though not tied to any of the nearby scrub, the horses had learned to wait.  Just before the sun melted down onto the farthest reaches on the open plain behind them, a single figure appeared.

A man.

He seemed to emerge from the earth itself.  The quiet earth.  The man dragged one leg as he approached the horses.

One of the horses, the larger one, trusted the man and always had.  The horse allowed the man to lean hard against his flank; allowed the man to pull himself up into the saddle.

The man walked the horse near the other two horses and took up the reins of each.

The horses knew violence.  All of them did.  And they sometimes sensed it in the same way they sensed monsoon rains before the darkest clouds opened above them.  They also knew that men knew bigger violence.  Much bigger.

The violence was gone now.

The two horses did not in particular trust the man leading them, but they trusted the horse under the man and they liked feeling the open ground fall away under their hooves.

Nothing felt better than chasing the sun.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Calving

Glaciers calve icebergs into the ocean.   My house calves dense piles of snow from my metal roof down into my yard and down onto my driveway.  Yesterday afternoon, on our second day of warm temperatures following heavy snows, a fairly sizeable drift calved from the garage roof onto my driveway.

Shoveling the snow off the drive took about ten minutes, but I rather enjoyed getting out and flinging the blockish chunks of snow of into piles along the drive.  Furthermore, I realize I can fasten cleats on the roof to keep the snow from sliding off.  But, honestly, I take a certain perverse pleasure in watching huge calving events from my roof.

Near 7:00 last night, the house shook a little and I heard what sounded like distant thunder.  Thunder from one valley over.  When I peered out my front door—sure enough—the other half of my drive was heaped with heavy snow. 

That girl and I dove into our coats and went out to shovel the snow off the drive.  Overnight, in cooling temperatures, those mushy sheds turn into mountains solid as rock.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

The Yellow and White House

Last night, my own dreams betrayed me.

A yellow and white house fell from the sky and crashed to the ground very near me.  Inside the house, two small children perished.

I did not ask why a yellow and white house fell from clear skies.  Of course that makes no sense.  I asked, instead, why small children should suffer or die.

What sense in that?

I woke immediately from my dream of the children, of weeping parents.  I woke to the bruised darkness of my own house—to such profound sadness.  Awake, I felt the sorrow as certainly as I felt the bedsheet and blankets on my chest.

What hidden monster inside me smashed that yellow and white house against the earth and killed those children?

-- Mitchell Hegman