The Television Learning Curve

The learning curve often is strewn with sticky notes, legal pad pages filled with sentence fragments, and wads of crumpled false-starts.

Each of us seems to have a blind spot on the learning curve.

Me?  You could teach me to both recall and properly tell the very same joke for several hours.  You could include instructive videos, a pop quiz, and two practice sessions.  But in two weeks, if you asked me to tell the joke, I would be shooting blanks.

Jokes don’t stick to me.

My sister, Deb, has an equivalent struggle when it comes to the operation of a smart television with more than one input.

Yesterday, she and my brother-in-law came out to my house so I could give her a rundown on how to operate our new television.  She will be watching the house and caring for my 20 pounds of housecat while that girl and I travel to Aruba for a stay on the island. 

Things did not go exceptionally well at first.  At one point, I had to stop and hug my brother-in-law…just because.  After a few practice sessions and a series of notes, my sister managed to access the Blu-ray player, the sound bar, Netflix, and the satellite feed we use out here in the hinterlands.

I will admit, our television control is a bit daunting.  Four remotes are required for all that she wants to do.  I have posted a photograph of the methodology my sister finally developed for managing the television.

I think she has this!

-- Mitchell Hegman    

Through the Night

Yesterday, just before dark, I glanced out the back door (it’s a glass patio number with cat noseprints across the bottom) to see if any ice fishermen remained on the lake below.  I saw what looked like rain spots on the deck, which is presently surrounded by high berms of snow I cleared from it.

I stepped out and stepped back in.  “It’s raining,” I announced to that girl.

Fifteen minutes later, in full darkness, I stepped out the front door and stepped back in.  “It’s really, really, really raining,” I announced to that girl.

“Is that a big deal?”

“It is for January in this part of Montana.”

Rain persisted into the darkness.

This morning I stepped out the front door and stepped back in.

For a brief time I considered running back to wake that girl so I could say, “It’s ice,” but that would likely be an RLE (relationship limiting exercise).

 -- Mitchell Hegman 

Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart

In May of last year, Chris Cornell committed suicide by hanging himself.  He was 52 at the time of his death.  His story is often told: the story of a highly successful star who seems to miss finding happiness at every turn and ultimately crashes.  Chris Cornell was among my favorite male vocalists and songwriters in rock music.  I loved his work in Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of the Dog.

Posted today is “Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart."

-- Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpMfZPAc1kg  

Hoarfrost

Hoarfrost is probably my favorite of winter’s many presentations.  It’s way better than the presentation where you and your buddy get a four-wheel-drive truck stuck in deep snow halfway to the middle of nowhere.  And way better than the one where your big sister talks you into sticking your tongue onto a metal post in subzero temperatures.

The “hoar” in hoarfrost, near as I can tell from slipping around on the internet, is derived from the Old English term “har,” meaning gray or white with connotations of old age.

Hoarfrost develops on almost anything upright when ideal conditions persist: trees, grass, and fences.  Overnight, a brilliant white sheath of scales grows on every exposed limb, every post, and every wire.  Even overhead powerlines become enveloped in frost.

So far as frost goes, hoarfrost is easily the most fragile of formations.  Shaking a heavily bejeweled tree or bumping against an encrusted fence will cause the frost to detach and spill down wholesale.  The entire coat of frost will instantly shed as sparkles of so much fairy dust.  A brisk wind will clear an entire landscape in a spectacular wash of sparkles.

Yesterday morning came with heavy hoarfrost and a cold inversion pressed against the prairie south of my home.  As soon as the sun cleared the hills east of my house, I ran outside to capture images.  The last photograph features my house when the sun, as it does, finally scoured the frozen mist from the earth.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

Retirement

I once thought a man was not a man

who did not smoke cigarettes to nubs,

drink late,

and espouse Charles Bukowski.

I girled-up, though, and quit smoking

and I worked.

My legs hurt.  My Back.

But up went the airport terminal,

the hydroelectric plant, towers on bald hills,

garish houses, workshops.

I armored-up, edged my sword,

marched against my own better judgement,

marched against my own leisure.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I thrust my leave-taking letter

through a mailbox slot,

and imagined plunging my sword into the hard belly of a dragon.

My sword sharp and brilliantly white.

To hell that dragon.

To hell you hot bastard.

-- Mitchell Hegman

NOTE: The above writing is what happens if you drink coffee and think about Bukowski the morning after dropping an application for retirement benefits in the mail.

A Day at the 4R Ranch

Picture yourself sprawled face down in two feet of snow.  The equivalent of half-sheets of plywood have been strapped to your feet and you are not certain you can extricate yourself from the snow.  A pair of over-exuberant dogs are bouncing—no—swimming like porpoises through the snow around you.  Some birds in a nearby aspen seem to be laughing.

What I have just described is something we call “snowshoeing.”

I am mostly kidding, of course.  Snowshoeing is far more beautiful than the tumbles you might (will) take.

Winter in the mountains affords a great and extraordinary quiet.   Pure white meadows of untracked snow sparkling from end to end.  The rest of the expanse—the rolling, upward surging landscape—is either evergreen, blue, or white.  Nothing else compares to the purity, the serenity of deep untracked snow.  The sun is brighter.  The whites are whiter.  The greens are greener.  The blues are bluer. 

Winter seems one big soft thing.

Yesterday, that girl and I drove into the Elkhorn Mountains to snowshoe with our friends Patti and Tom.  They own the 4R Ranch, a 900 acre slice of mountain perfection just below the highest mountains in the range.  We started our trek right at their front door and snowshoed in a perfect returning circle under a warm sun.

-- Mitchell Hegman 

Tracks in the Snow

At this point, the ice on the lake below my house is some eighteen inches thick.  Yesterday, with temperatures reaching into the forties, that girl and I walked down to the lake and then tromped onto the perfectly flat, snow-covered surface.  All the way down to the lake and across the surface of the ice, the snow told tales of crossings and explorations.  But mostly the day was given to our deep blue sky.

-- Mitchell Hegman