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

Digging a Hole

Weirdly enough, I don’t mind digging a hole in the ground. For one thing, the results of your work are immediate and obvious. Additionally, performing any manner of manual labor allows me to clear everything else from my mind—it’s a holiday for my brain.

Last winter, Helena and the broad area surrounding it experienced a die-off of certain non-native decorative juniper bushes. We lost a juniper that had been growing alongside the driveway for thirty years.

After experiencing her first autumn season some six months after arriving here, Desiree has become enamored with bushes and trees that display red and orange when they turn. With this as our guide, we agreed we needed to dig out the root ball and replace the juniper with something that will exhibit red in the fall. On a recent visit to a local nursery, we purchased an autumn splendor buckeye tree.

Yesterday, I excavated around the juniper root ball, pried it from the ground, and dug a hole that would accommodate the buckeye tree. A great order of work, that. And yet, I enjoyed the time spent digging.

I am posting a photograph of the hole I dug and the juniper root ball I removed to make way for planting the buckeye tree. I placed a can of Cold Smoke Beer alongside the hole to provide a reference for size.

The Buckeye Tree Hole

—Mitchell Hegman

A Group of Old Folks

While poking around inside a store the other day, I spotted four elderly folks clustered together, chatting near the intersection of two aisles. I immediately surmised that they were friends—two couples who had chanced upon each other while shopping.

I thought to myself, Old people are kinda cute.

As I walked past them, I recognized one of the individuals as someone several years younger than me. That nearly convinced me I am getting old.

—Mitchell Hegman