Another Montana Sunrise (June 30, 2011)

 

 

A photograph of the Helena Valley Holding Reservoir and the Big Belt Mountains.  I drove to the water's edge in full darkness and sat near the lake until sunrise. 

 

Time well-spent!

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Bad Days

On bad days, such as this, I stumble around my house knowing that I will never again find my wife in any of the rooms I enter. Fairly often, I stop and stand wherever I am in the house—today, in the kitchen, with the fluorescent light grinding away electronically above me, thinking with all my might, that I would give up anything to have her back with me again. And I would gladly bring her back to me on the worst day of our relationship (so few are they), standing there keenly enraged at something I have done, but standing there. Just standing there with me. My wife.

--Mitchell Hegman

Three Socks

I am incapable of dressing myself. Strike that. I am, I should say, incapable of properly dressing myself. Yes, I can easily pull on a pair of plaid slacks and then climb directly into a canary yellow shirt. But when I am finished I look, as my friend likes to say, ungood.

For nearly thirty years, my wife dressed me. She—a fashion-wise seamstress by vocation—soon assembled a Mitch-proof wardrobe with a compatible mix of shirt and pants in somewhat muted colors and design that could not be mismatched. I could grab any two things and wear them without alarm to anyone’s sartorial sensibilities. Furthermore, she made certain that all sizes were in proper accord. From time to time I still struggled with mixing blue and black socks. No system is foolproof.

Since my sweet wife’s passing, not even two full months in time, I have degraded stridently in my appearance. Not the obviously aged and inherently, as my friend might say, unhandsome thing I naturally struggle with. I cannot do anything about that. What I mean is, my dress has corrupted again. I am presently swimming in ill-fitting shirts. My sweats attempt to ankle themselves at nearly every step. I have acquired a few new shirts with wrong patterns. My colors often scream at passersby. I cannot help myself. I am doomed by some faulty design in fashion sense from the get-go. Back in the day, I continued on with paisley patterns, nearly ten years after they fell from grace. Just yesterday, thanks to my forgetting to purchase cling-free dryer sheets for several weeks, a sock fell to the floor from inside my jacket when I reached for something at work. Only by dumb luck, the third sock matched the two I was wearing.

--Mitchell Hegman

Dust and Horses

Driving to work along the ranchroads this morning, I found dust hanging in the air throughout the pine and juniper arroyos and overtop the painted horses at the Rafter paddocks, evidence of someone leaving ahead of me. My early morning beginnings have removed me from the normal cycles of most people scattered in the low hills and lakefront homes around me. Mostly, I find only evidence of their passing: cats slinking along the sunflowered berms, dogs trotting fencelines. I have encountered strange things, too. Once, in mid-summer, I nearly ran overtop a rainbow trout lying in the middle of the road. The trout was frozen solid and longer than my forearm. Another time, I rounded a corner and found a translucent plastic bag hovering above the sage and bunchgrass just off the road. The bag slowly circulated above, seemingly without intent to fall back to the ground. I drove off with the bag still hovering aloft. I have found girly magazines and tie-downs and maybe a dozen articles of clothing.

Some mornings, I stop and pull Dalmatian toadflax from the shale rolls and then scatter the plants across the gravel road. On occasion, I stop and speak with the horses. “Beautiful morning,” I say to them as they glance oblique. One horse always faces the exact opposite direction of the others. I imagine that horse as the poet or the simpleton, the difference is the same. Today, as I wheeled through the dust, hanging before me like a lake mist, the dull smell of earth and the sharp smell of juniper filled my truck, and the thought struck me that I like the smell of dust. I prefer that to the sweet smell of water.

--Mitchell Hegman

For June 25th

Here is a birthday bouquet of arrowleaf balsamroot for Uyen.

With love,

Mitch

First Kiss of Summer

Rain fell across my roof just before sunrise, sounding like dozens of kittens padding over. Once the rain stopped, I stepped outside to warm rainsmell and the occasional cool tap against my arm and cheeks of lingering droplets finding a way down from the lolling clouds. As I watched, the new sun slowly brushed watercolor orange and yellow and red into the highest peaks and clouded sky above the Big Belt Mountains. The final drops of rain began to mist before reaching me.

I have always been drawn the sunrise. This is something I cannot explain. Today, when the sun appeared over the muted blue range, it came with a rainbow sundog in lockstep. I swear to you, Love, witnessing the dawn of this day felt exactly like that first time we really kissed, down at the lakeshore those twenty-some years ago.

--Mitchell Hegman

Opportunity

So, maybe you didn’t recognize opportunity because opportunity came in the form of a 43-year-old grass widow form California who moved in down the street. You winced at the sight of her suicide-blonde hair and neon yellow tube-top. Her teenage son smoked unfiltered cigarettes while sitting on the front stoop and flicked his butts onto the street. On Saturdays, opportunity washed her SUV on the street while wearing short-shorts. The kid’s cigarette butts trickled down the curb to your drive. Using your garden hose, you sprayed them away. And, actually, when you think back, opportunity had a pretty nice ass.

--Mitchell Hegman