Fragile Beauty

If you are seeking something to worry about, choose fairyslippers.

Yes, the flowers.  Calypso, in scientific terminology.

Though distributed in circumboreal fashion (in a band of boreal forests circling the Earth), fairyslippers are considered endangered.  A member of the orchid family, they are small and equally as finicky and fragile as they are beautiful.

From the very start, fairyslippers have a tenuous grip on life.  They have but a single leaf.  They also require a specific fungus in the soil in order to survive.  A cool and moist environment is another must.  Finally—because fairyslippers possess no nectar, they attract pollinates by deception.  Their vanilla scent and shape fools pollinators who land on the flowers and bumble around without gain just long enough to get the job of pollination done.

A fairyslipper plant, under the best of conditions, will last no more than five years.  They do not tolerate pulling, trampling, or transplanting.  More alarming, fairyslippers do not endure logging or any other such wholesale disturbance of habitat.      

My cabin property boasts a fairly large population of fairyslippers.  Having learned more about them, I guard them jealously.

If you find fairyslippers in your travels, talk nice to them, but leave them be.

Posted are a couple of (surprisingly sharp) photographs of fairyslippers I captured with my new smarter-than-my-phone on a recent trip to my cabin.

--Mitchell Hegman

By Definition: The Middle of Nowhere

There is, by definition, a town in middle of nowhere here in the continental U.S.

Turns out the town is in Montana.

First off, we have to establish the metric for determining nowhere and then find the center point.

Okay, it’s a bit easier than that.

The Washington Post wanted to find the small town in the continental U.S. located the farthest, in any direction, from any metropolitan area.  A metropolitan area being defined as a city with a population of more than 75,000 people.

Glasgow, Montana, population 3,300, is the very town they were seeking.

The nearest city to Glasgow is Billings, Montana.  Billings is 277 miles away.  A drive of well over 4 hours is required to reach one place from the other.

If the distance from cities is not enough to give you the impression of being in the middle of nowhere, there is also an abandoned Airforce Base near Glasgow.  The base operated during the height of the Cold War, but was utterly abandoned in 1976.   

I previously read where Circle, Montana, was determined as the town farthest from the nearest Starbucks of any town in the continentals U. S.  From Circle, you need to drive 192 miles in one direction to reach the nearest Starbucks.

Both of these towns occupy country we often refer to as the Big Open—the last of the Great Plains flexing flat belly muscles across Eastern Montana.

The most important thing to know about these two towns is that the folks in both places feel pretty good about living in the middle of nowhere.  They can make their own coffee and they have no immediate need for traffic.

--Mitchell Hegman

Abstract Conditions

I have previously expressed my love for photographs of mundane subjects that, by point of view or tricks of light, are transformed into beautiful abstractions.

Posted today are two such photographs.

The subjects: collections of rainwater on the surface of my new propane grill.

I captured the photographs in first light.  The directional nature of the light and the tight field of focus add greatly to the obscurity of the photographs.  I created the red spot on the second photograph by “flashing” through the palm and fingers of my hand. 

--Mitchell Hegman

My Body is My Temple

When a person is in their twenties or thirties, making the statement “My body is my temple” makes some sense.  But at this later stage of my life I have a kind shack thing going on over in my direction.

I have crooked window shutters and weathered siding.  My roofing is looking a bit battered.  Inside, a few paintings are hanging crooked.

I am not complaining.  I feel pretty good.  Yesterday, between rain showers, I even managed a four-mile hike on Mount Helena with my friend Jeff.

I think, at this point, I will go with this: “My body was earned.”

Me.                                                                                      

Jeff.

--Mitchell Hegman

Jesse Needs a Jet

I’ve been told the Lord works in mysterious ways.  Apparently, God also has peculiar conversations with some people.

Take televangelist Jesse Duplantis, for example.  Mr. Duplantis claims to have engaged in the following conversation:

The Lord: “Jesse, you wanna come up where I’m at?”

Duplantis: “What do you mean?”

The Lord: “I want you to believe in me for a Falcon 7-X.”

Duplantis: “OK.”

The first thing we need to define is “Falcon 7-X.”   A Falcon 7-X (specifically a Dassault Falcon 7-X) is a business jet with a 5,950 mile range.  This sleek baby will carry 12 to 16 passengers at 700 miles per hour without working up a sweat.  At present a 7-X will set you back a cool $54 million.

Mind you, Jesse Duplantis already has other private planes at his disposal.  He uses them to carry himself around the world from his base in Louisiana.  But he firmly believes—as he said—“If Jesus was physically on the Earth today, he wouldn’t be riding a donkey.” 

Jesse Duplantis is convinced he must fly fast and he must fly far in order to save souls.

There exists some evidence that televangelists, as a whole, see buying a seat on a commercial flight as entirely unseemly.  In a video appearance with both Duplantis and fellow televangelist Kenneth Copeland (another jet-buying hero), Copeland opined that because they are famous, they would have people coming up to them and asking for prayers if they took a commercial flight.

What could be worse than that?

And Copland added: “You can’t manage that today.  This dope-filled world, and get in a long tube with a bunch of demons.  And it’s deadly.”

Duplantis concurred, saying: “And it works on your heart.  It really does.”

What kind of an evangelist would want to actually be surrounded by all those messy souls they are they are trying to save?

--Mitchell Hegman

Sources: www.usatoday.com, www.bbc.com

A Place in the Mountains

After working on my cabin in the mountains, I often wander out to walk along the clear waters of the creek as it prances along.  Sometimes, I amble from wildflower to wildflower, stopping to examine each one.

I have in mind that someday a little boy or little girl will come along and understand what I feel.

I have never gotten over the mountains.

As a little boy, I was amazed by the bigness of life in them.

I love how light is sifted down to arnica flowers and grasses on the forest floor.  I enjoy watching chickadees ascending through the branches of tall pines.  I require deer crossing from shadows to light.  I need to hear the insistent sound of the creek finding its way through willows.  I need aspen trees to spin their leaves at first light.

The scent released when snow first kisses downfall is without parallel in this world.

Someday, I hope to leave this place to someone who loves it more than they want it.

A patch of arnica alongside my cabin.

--Mitchell Hegman

Future Huckleberries and Shootingstar Flowers

On the way to view wildflowers along the Rocky Mountain Front the other day, I crossed over the mountains twice.  On a brief stop at an elevation of about 6000 feet, I briefly scoured the forest understory to see how the huckleberry bushes were doing. 

I found swaths of huckleberry bushes in bloom.

Shootingstar flowers were also coloring the more open places.

--Mitchell Hegman