Mountain Colors

Today I am posting photographs of flowers I captured yesterday while at my cabin.

Showy fleabane is described at gardenia.net as “vigorous” and “upright.”   I find these descriptors perfect for this joyful flower.  The flowers are about the size of a quarter and often grow in tight clusters.  Most impressively, showy fleabane is a perennial that blooms throughout the summer and on into the fall.  The name of this flower reflects the belief that that dried fleabane plants repelled fleas.

Showy Fleabane

Agoseris, commonly known as orange mountain dandelion, is a perennial from the sunflower family.  A Forest Service website describes Agoseris as “cheerful.”  I find this flower all of that.  Agoseris is not terribly common near my cabin, but I do find them as I walk through the understory.  The plant tends to hold its blossom high above the surrounding grasses and forbs—calling my attention with the zeal of an orange beacon.

Agoseris (Orange Mountain Dandelion)

—Mitchell Hegman

To-Do List for July 2020

—Make a huckleberry pie (with a smiley face cut into the top crust)

—Come up with a word other than “vanilla” to describe the finish of a fine Scotch

—Clean the floor under the refrigerator

—Identify that low, spreading plant with lobed leaves that produces small tomato-like fruit

—Have words with the deer busting up my bird feeder during midnight raids

—Hike to Hanging Valley

—Do something fish would appreciate

—Mitchell Hegman

Celebrating America

No words.

—Mitchell Hegman

Bacon Wins Again

My twenty pounds of housecat figured out how to open the sliding screen on my back door many years ago.  He rather nudges it open with his nose.  Early yesterday morning, I opened the glass door and let him out into the deep blue of predawn.

Less the five minutes later, I happened to be in the kitchen when I heard the cat nudging at the screen.  Curious, I stepped around the peninsula counter between me and the door.  “Why are you coming back in?” I asked.  “I just let you out.”

As soon as I finished saying this, I saw the mouse in his mouth.

I tried to flag the cat to a stop right there.  I approached him cautiously—hoping I might usher him right back out the door.

No soap on that.

The cat dropped the mouse on the floor.  The mouse shot off to hide under the bulky leg structure of my dining table.   The cat followed.

For the next few minutes, the three of us—cat, mouse, and Mitch—chased each other around the dining room.  The mouse eventually found a hiding place up inside the hydronic heat register near the back door.

We all reached a stalemate there at the register.    

My friend Tad insists that bacon is the duct tape of food.  You can use it to fix anything.  This came to mind as I the cat and I stared in frustration at the register.

I have a small live trap for catching mice.  I grabbed the trap, dropped a few bacon crumbles inside, and set it on the floor directly in front of where the mouse vanished.

Bacon is force.

After no more than five minutes, the mouse entered the trap and caught himself.  I quickly carried the trap outside and flicked the door open out in the tall grass outside.   The mouse melted into the grass.

I try to always have a bag of bacon crumbles on hand. 

Dust tape, too.

—Mitchell Hegman

360 Miles

Yesterday, I drove 360 miles across the state of Montana. 

I could not have asked for a better day.  Temperatures remained comfortable throughout.  I drove through striking, ever-changing landscapes from beginning to end.  I started out amid handsome rimrocks and escarpments and finished my drive bounded by mountains.

At a rest area near Custer, I hiked up a well-maintained trail to the top of a hill and captured a few images with my smarter-than-me-phone.  The trail and rest area struck me as incredibly clean and orderly—enough so to be beautiful.   As good fortune would have it, the man who maintains the rest area happened to be picking up a few bits of plastic from the parking lot as I approached my car after my hike.

“Are you the one who always maintains this?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to thank you.  You are doing a tremendous job.  This is…beautiful.  Your work stands out.”

“Thank you.”

I gauged the man somewhere in his mid-thirties and Native American.  We talked for a while.  Small Talk.  The man was soft-spoken and unpretentious.  Before we parted, I thanked him one more time.

The state of Montana is lucky to have him.

I drove on.

The landscape around me kicked up into loftier stone and earth formations as I drove westward.  Soon enough, I found myself alongside blue and white mountains and then I drove directly into them.

There, in the mountains, my home.

Near Colstrip

Man (Under a Hat)

Rest Area Picnic Table

Crazy Mountains

Wood Rose

—Mitchell Hegman

Without Constant Tending

The human race is mostly disturbed soil.  Without constant tending by people who care, the result will always be weeds.

—Mitchell Hegman

My Failures

Too often, thoughts of my various failures return to me, feral as barn cats on the periphery of my domicile.  I can only observe as they come and go, taunting, raiding, each generation breeding offspring more intemperate than the last.  All night, they might yowl at nothing.  They play with dust bunnies and allow mice to scuttle through the hollows within my mind.  They romp when I wish them quiet.  They laze when I try to shoo them away.

—Mitchell Hegman