Ohio: The Facts

1. Fifty percent of the U.S. population lives within a 500 mile radius of Columbus Ohio.

2. Seven U.S. presidents were born in Ohio.  William Henry Harrison, president number eight “from” Ohio, was actually born in Virginia.  Harrison died after only one month in office.

3. If you want to serve horse meat at your restaurant in Ohio, you are required by law to hang a sign outside saying, “Horse Meat Served Here.”

4. The world’s first electric traffic light system was installed at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105^th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914.

5. Pollution in the Cuyahoga River has allowed the river to catch on fire thirteen times.

6. Fifty-eight percent of the U.S. population will be in the surrounding lanes when you wish to change lanes on the Ohio Turnpike.

7. Nobody remembers the names of the seven U.S. presidents born in Ohio.

8. Horse meat for dinner might be a good option if you are in Akron.

9. The first traffic light system used only a green and red light.  A buzzer sounded a few seconds before the lights were changed.

10. Locals don’t swim in the Cuyahoga River.  

--Mitchell Hegman  

Somewhere in Ohio

The writer Wallace Stegner noted that to appreciate the American West, a person must “get over green.”

The west is dry.  You cannot expect to regularly see sweeping expanses of green fields and broad leafy things in your surround.  Rain may not visit some places for weeks or months.  Jagged stone and raw earth defines entire regions.  The views are often expansive.  You may see a tail of dust rising from a truck driving over dirt roads three or four miles in the distance.  The sky holds the clouds high above.

Ohio is not the West.  Ohio is green.

The clouds are low.

We got here around green, through green, in green.

Yesterday, we drove through several heavy downpours.  The sky remained gray and low from beginning to end.  The view was limited from nearest rise to nearest rise.  We seemed wading through trees, new corn, and tall grass. 

Somewhere in Ohio—during my stay—I hope to find a place that helps me understand this green better.  I need to touch it.

--Mitchell Hegman

Into the Cities (Update from the Midwest)

Rain and landscapes of solid green caught up to us in Minnesota.   We diverted to the Twin Cities late yesterday to catch some dear friends in the north.

Today, we fell back down through Wisconsin, where the trees conspired against us and closed in tight.  The clouds lowered and spread across the green hills like spilled milk.  Came again the dark rain. 

I do not wish to live in the clouds.

That much I know.

Now we have dropped into the tangle of highways that hold Chicago firmly in place on all maps.  That girl is driving for now.  She is pretty while at work.

--Mitchell Hegman

Proud American

It’s me.  I’m the proud American.

I got a little excited as that girl and I first glimpsed Mount Rushmore while ascending the serpentine highway leading there through the Black Hills.  “There they are!” I said to that girl.  I pointed through the trees as we rounded a sweeping corner.

A few minutes later we found a parking spot and began wading through a sea of people streaming toward the viewpoint.  Soon, we found ourselves navigating through more people along the walk of state flags.  Looking up at those familiar faces carved in the mountain above me, I became decidedly emotional.  Honestly, I had to fight back tears of pride.

We are a great nation.

We are.

Having driven through hundreds of miles of our beautiful, open West to arrive at Rushmore, I felt ridiculously proud yesterday as that girl and I stood there below those faces.  Giants among men, those.

One man fought to free the whole nation.  One man gave the means to preserve our freedoms in perpetuity.  One man preserved our wild spaces for all eternity.  One man finally gave freedom to those yet oppressed.

And so much more.

Posted are a couple photographs I captured at Mount Rushmore.

I love you, America.  I really do.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Gillette Syndrome

I woke early and found the sun prying apart the curtains of our sleeping room.  Peering outside, I saw first light scouring the town of Gillette, Wyoming.  Big trucks and a single motorcycle hummed westward on the nearby interstate.

Gillette is burrowed into the Powder River Basin.  The basin is comprised of red and white hills carved by hard seasons and rain that falls hard when it comes.  Here—halfway between the Big Horn Mountains and the Black Hills—badlands and grasslands try to mix together and end up looking like stacks of Neapolitan ice cream.

This is big oil and big coal country.

The economy is boom and bust.

Driven by energy markets, the town of Gillette saw a booming economy in the 1960s, the 1970s and again in the 2000s.  During each of these boom cycles, the town essentially doubled in size overnight.  Some of my friends came here to work in the 1970s.  My nephew is here now.

In the 1970s, a psychologist named ElDean Kohrs explored something he called the Gillette Syndrome.  The Gillette Syndrome describes what happens socially in boom towns such as Gillette during the boom cycles.  It’s not all good.

Money and opportunity: yes

But comes with boom these: drifters and crime, artificially high cost of living, schisms in the established social fabric.  Eventually, as is occurring now, the energy market changes and the boom economy retracts.  People begin leaving again.

All that said, Gillette is a decent town surrounded by painted hills.  Nothing wrong with that.

--Mitchell Hegman

Exit Left

Early this morning, that girl and I begin a drive across the heart of America.  We exit left, leaving behind the constant chain of the Rocky Mountains.  For the next two days we will weave our way past island mountain ranges: the Crazies, the Big Horns, and the Black Hills.  Eventually, we will find our way to Ohio and a new grandchild.

We leave our small prairie life at the beginning of the bitterroot bloom and the arrival of fawn deer.

See you on the far side of the Crazy Mountains!

--Mitchell Hegman

Blanks and Buttons

Increasingly, our journey through life (in all aspects) is a matter of filling in the provided blanks and pressing the correct buttons.  Thinking about this, I wonder how much of our life is really governed by us…and how much is managed by those creating the blanks and buttons.

--Mitchell Hegman