Name

Emma crushed the petals of wood roses and the skin of tomatoes into a paste.  She shook the dried bells of flax and collected the fine black seeds in her palm.  She gathered yellow pollen in a small jar.

Using braided grass as a brush, Emma painted her name in paste on a flat grey stone.  Not in flowing or flourishing style.

“EMMA” in simple block letters.

She sprinkled flax seed and pollen over the sticky letters and brushed away the excess.

Emma did not love her name.  Rather, she felt reduced by it.  Caged.

Emma carried the stone to the crest of a hill and placed it where rains would gradually wash way the letters when storms arrived and she walked away with yellow fingers and a strange satisfaction.

—Mitchell Hegman

Critical Thought

Where many people reach their peak of critical thought where they finally decide for themselves they either reside in a godless world where nothing matters, or one in which a god exists and is nudging both the stars above and the traffic pouring down along I-15, I wonder about much more.

For example, would a god enjoy shrimp for lunch?

Whence came such a god?

Is it plausible that a god might be a “male” figure as we see maleness, and, if so, might he have a hot-looking younger sister?

—Mitchell Hegman

Horsefly Creek

Horsefly Creek spills down through the next valley over from my cabin.  My creek, Hogum, and Horsefly share opposite flanks of the same mountains.  This means—in the sparest terms—my cabin is something between two and three miles from the Horsefly Fire presently burning through dense beetle-kill timber.

I have been staying at my cabin all alone for the last two days and nights, living alongside the fire.  During daylight hours, I hear chainsaws crying against distant trees.  I hear helicopters thumping across the Continental Divide, flying in from prairie staging areas at the feet of the mountains on the east slopes.  Occasionally, I hear bulldozers clanking and echoing, echoing, echoing through the array of finger-ridges and thick stands of timber.

The fire has, except for one storm-filled night, clawed in the opposite direction from my cabin.  An estimated 1,350 acres have been ravaged thus far.  Some 532 people were enlisted to fight the fire due to the proximity of so many houses and cabins in the direction of fire travel.

Thankfully, the fire was listed at 45% contained as of last night and the people evacuated on the east side of the fire were allowed to return home.  A few hours before darkness collapsed across my valley, a long soaking rain descended on the mountains.

For the last two days I have been a little lonely.  Though I have busied myself with carpentry and electrical work, I am feeling particularly isolated.  Singular.  And my narrow valley has remained eerily calm in the mornings and evenings.  Too quiet.  Something-obviously-wrong-but-beautiful quiet.

Surprisingly, smoke has not invaded my space.  Sandhill cranes have been calling from the meadows above me.  Hummingbirds have whizzed by my head.  Deer have casually strolled alongside me.

This morning, I will pack up and leave.  The Horsefly Fire is now laying down, shrinking within the perimeters of fire lines.  Not certain what I might have done (other than flee) if the fire invaded, but it seems I no longer have to worry. 

Posted are a couple photographs from my lonely, yet green, mountain valley.

August Wildflowers

Hogum Creek

—Mitchell Hegman

Where the Tracks End

For some inexplicable reason, I got to thinking about one winter morning, years ago, when I left my house in the predawn darkness and drove through several inches of freshly fallen snow.  The snow on the country road lay smooth and without a track of any kind under my headlight beams.

Just as I began climbing a long hill, a small set of tracks hooked into the very center of the road from someplace in the darkened junipers alongside the road.

Little blue holes in the snow, those.

I supposed the tracks to be from a chipmunk or squirrel or some other such diminutive creature and I followed the tracks down the very center of the road.  The tracks carried on, straight as the edge of a piece of paper, once they struck the road.  Intrigued by the tracks, I tried to keep them between the beams of my headlights as I drove.

Suddenly the tracks stopped.  Just plain stopped.

No turn to the right.

No turn to the left.

Not a single step back.

No critter in sight.

Had the thing evaporated in mid-step?  Had it suddenly dropped into a black hole?  Had the cloudy night itself plucked up the hapless critter?   I have seen a similar thing when a bird snatches something up from the snow, but this always leave impressions of wings or some other sign of a tragic or unscripted end.

What here?

I drove overtop the place where the tracks stopped.  On into the cobalt darkness.  I felt a little shaken, really.   New, smooth snow sparkled and danced electric under my wash of lights as I swept on.

I glanced in my rearview mirror.  Just my tracks.  My tracks fading white to blue against the blue-black night.

Just that.

And me at the end of those tracks…trotting on to my own uncertain end.

—Mitchell Hegman

Down at the Lake

Sitting down at the lakeshore watching my underground sprinkler system chik-chikking arcs of water out across my small patch of lawn is strangely satisfying for me.

Zen-like.

I particularly enjoy when the spray of two sprinklers swipe across each other.

We are working together down here.

I similarly enjoy finding a single ant and following it as far as I can before my stupid human size smooshes me hard against a wall or the ant’s path corners me amid impassible flourishes of juniper and sagebrush.

Having watched a half-dozen wake-boats slogging by—loaded down with obnoxious people—I have decided that women wearing long summer dresses are more alluring than women in bikinis.

Finally, I think I have a beer in the refrigerator down here.  That must be worth something.

—Mitchell Hegman

Question

Would it be appropriate to call a carpenter busy at work installing a new kitchen countertop counterproductive?

—Mitchell Hegman

Button

Sometimes, I wish there existed a button that would, upon being pressed, instantly turn dogs that never stop yapping into cats.

I would press that button every few days.

—Mitchell Hegman