Morning Report, October 17, 2024

Morning Report for October 17, 2024:

The candidates for various offices are clamoring as the election approaches. Though such a thing is not possible, it seems as though 11 out of every 10 television advertisements are negative political offerings. Daily, my mailbox fills with political fliers, which I promptly discard. The chipmunks, normally scampering about the back deck, have made themselves scarce as they finalize setting up their burrows for overwintering. In just the last week, the linden tree outside my bay windows has blushed yellow, and more island-girl Christmas decorations have blossomed within our house. Finally, in broader news, courts in Switzerland have ruled that a dial manufacturer (in their much-vaunted watchmaking industry) was justified in forcing workers to clock out and take bathroom breaks on their own time.

End of morning report.

Linden Tree

Christmas Decorations

—Mitchell Hegman

Creation (A Girl Named Tamira)

In a time long before mechanical contrivances washed clothes and milled wheat, a young girl named Tamira was sent to wash clothes beneath the streamside cottonwood trees. Though her name meant “magic,” Tamira was also mischievous. She quickly grew bored with dipping clothes in the chill water and began wandering along the edge of the stream. Finding a puff of dandelion parasols, she fashioned them into small winged insects, broadcast them to the wind, and watched them fly away. Discovering small twigs and stones, she shaped them into hard-shell insects and shellfish, and by releasing them into the water, they became the crawlies you find today. Finally, Tamira plucked leaves from the cottonwood and folded them into the shape of fish. When she tossed the folded leaves into the eddies of the water, they transformed into trout.

Tamira was a naughty girl. For this reason, some of the winged insects became biting things, some of the crawlies pinch, and the trout became shy.

—Mitchell Hegman

Howling in the Night

When I first moved out here to the country thirty-some years ago, the coyotes living in the pine and juniper wilds around my home yowled nightly. They also had a strange habit: if a small plane flew low over the ranchlands at night, they would ignite into a crying fit just after the plane cleared the gulley, hill, or island of prairie where they happened to be. The howling frightened my wife, but I found myself fascinated by how the wild chorus swelled and ebbed all around us. However, as more houses began to appear in the landscape around me, the sound of the chorus began to fade. By the early 2000s, the nights fell into silence, and the coyotes were gone. This year, for whatever reason, the coyotes have returned to the swaths of darkness surrounding my house. I can’t say this is comforting, exactly, but a part of me appreciates the crying in the night.

—Mitchell Hegman

A High Mountain Drive

We followed a meandering road, ascending high into the mountains. By now, at all elevations, the forests have adopted their autumn colors. The road we chose soon delivered us to a place where lofty tamaracks had marched into the fir and pine stands of timber. Here and there along the way, cottonwood and aspen trees appeared in tight collections, presenting a bright yellow, sometimes leaning toward orange. Where the sun reached into the understory, it often highlighted brush in bright red hues.

Posted are four photographs captured during our drive into the mountains.

Yellow

Desiree on the Road

Mountains to the North

A Splash of Red

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Yogi Berra Said

—"It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much."

—"If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."

—"You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six."

Descriptors of Me

What if there existed a requirement that each of us were required to hang a sign on our person that used a single descriptor to describe us? How would you describe yourself in a single concise phrase? I got to thinking about this and quickly realized that a lot of phrases would apply. Following are a few descriptors that apply to me:

• Often Looking in the Wrong Direction
• Still a Work in Progress
• Will Accept Donations and Some Advice
• Trying Not to Whine
• Not Afraid of Snakes
• Mostly Well-Trained

—Mitchell Hegman

Bliss

Last night, in our evening wear, Desiree and I walked out to stand on the deck as the sky slowly pulsed with rainbow colors. It was a soft display of northern lights—not dramatic, simply beautiful. Today, I am sharing an image of Desiree and me under the colorful sky.

Bliss (The Two of Us Amid Northern Lights)

—Mitchell Hegman