Smelted Down

What if, once we smelt everything down to the essential truth, crickets are just standing around waiting for a good reason to jump and the electrical industry is unable to drive the cost of installed solar photovoltaic systems below $3.50 a watt without incentives?

For some weird reason, these have become the sort of questions that keep me awake at night.

--Mitchell Hegman

Not Necessarily a Great Idea

Idea for a short story:

A small band of nomads (possibly all members with bright red hair) decides by popular vote that couples within the clan will stop making love and shall make Denver omelets instead.  The story opens with a man and a woman—obviously a couple—kidnapping an omelet with extra mushrooms from a roadside eatery.

--Mitchell Hegman

However

I try not to let much bother me.  I understand that, sad things happen.  Bad things happen.  Strange things happen.

Sometimes, we even manage to locate a good reason for all of that.

However, when the dark, angular shadow of the deer crossing the plain in front of my house separates from the deer itself, runs the opposite direction, and leaps down into a gulley…that bothers me a little.

--Mitchell Hegman

Something Bolted Away in the Forest Today

A small creature finally unnerved as I knelt in a bright green wash of huckleberry bushes picking ripened berries and dropping them into my bucket.  I did not see the creature, but heard it zipping off through the dry lilies and duff where it bolted away underneath the layers of understory growth.  I saw the beargrass and huckleberry plants waggle along the arrowlike trajectory of escape—across the forest floor from right where I knelt and then up a small incline of mixed grass, brush and upright timber.

Bigger than a mouse. 

Smaller than a fox.

A trail of wavering plants remained before me for a few seconds. Some of the berries on the jostled bushes swayed like ringing bells.   I could smell freshly released dust and the ever constant perfume of ripe huckleberries.

Though I have always had in mind that I belonged in the forest, the thought stuck me—as I paused from picking berries—that the forest may not be convinced I belong there. Still, I smiled and listened to the sound of a nearby stream flouncing down through the stones and mossy deadfall.  Far above me, clouds pushed on.

This, without end.  

--Mitchell Hegman

Poor Remedy

A blonde woman with an obvious facelift, fake breasts, and an insatiable sexual appetite is likely poor remedy for most ailments a man might have, but if provided with enough time a man will muster the proper disorder requiring such a remedy.

--Mitchell Hegman 

Morning on the Yellowstone River

Yesterday, I drove about 400 miles from Miles City to my home in Helena.  Eastern Montana is lovely right now.  Much of that part of the state has received above-average rainfall. The grass is tall and green in most places.  In a few spots, the purple echinacea is in still in bloom.

Where the landscape in Western Montana is defined by the mountain ranges, Eastern Montana is defined by the rivers that traverse through—primarily the Missouri in the north, the Musselshell in the central region, and the Yellowstone in the south.  The rivers have carved upside-down mountains across the plains.  The rivers have helped whittle the strange rock formations.  The rivers feed green into the wide, pan valleys.

I followed the Yellowstone for the first hour and then later fell in with the Musselshell. I drove through Roundup, on to Harlowton, and then into my home in the Big Belt Mountains.  I have posted photographs I captured of the Yellowstone River and the broad valley near Rosebud.

 

--Mitchell Hegman 

Naked Shark Repo Man

Last night I watched Naked and Afraid on the Discovery Channel.  The show is a survival challenge.   The twist on Naked and Afraid, however, is that two strangers—a survivalist man and a survivalist woman—are plunked down in various landscapes and must work together to survive.  And it is not always easy.  In one episode, as example, a man sunburned his winky.

Devastating.  The man nearly removed himself from the challenge.

I got to thinking that the Discovery might be able to spice up their existing stock of programs by adding a similar twist to the lineup.  Imagine these shows:

The Nakedness Catch

Naked Shark Repo Man

Naked  Really Dirty Jobs

Fast n’ Loud n’ Naked

If you are listening, Discovery Channel, I have my remote in my hand right now.

--Mitchell Hegman