Normal Instructor

My friend and, for quite some time, coworker, Kenny, perished after a fairly long bout with cancer. But that did not keep him from appearing in a dream I had last night. In the dream, I found myself walking down the street of an unknown city. I was a little uneasy because I had lost my cellphone. Just as I turned a corner on a sidewalk in a residential part of the city, I saw my friend Kenny walking partway down the street on the opposite side. Naturally, I called to him and waved.

He stopped and allowed me to approach. “Kenny! I have not seen you for ages. How are you?” 

“Doing great,” Kenny answered, smiling.

“I’m having a bad day,” I admitted. “I lost my cellphone. But you look fantastic. Really good!” I found myself amazed by how fit he looked. He had a notable glow of health about him. Kenny is not the hugging type, so I gave him a playful punch to the shoulder. “What have you been up to?”

“I started two trucking companies,” he said without hesitation. “I threw in with a partner on one of the companies, and we are in the process of selling it.”

“That’s good. Who is your business partner?”

“Normal Instructor.”

I paused, squinting a little, as if the meaning might come into focus if I adjusted my eyes. “Your business partner’s name is Normal Instructor?”

“Yes. Normal Instructor.”

I cannot quite decide if it was good fortune or bad timing, but that is the precise moment I woke up, left standing there with him, and with that name, like a door that had just begun to open. 

—Mitchell Hegman

Tomb Raiders

Alejandro Cambronero Albaladejo is angry. No, he’s not angry about the syllabic train wreck that is his name, though he has every reason to be. He’s miffed because he no longer holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Tomb Raider games.

He was unseated by Amy Dyson, a British woman who bested the Spanish collector with a count of 291 unique copies of games in the franchise, including special editions, the same game across multiple consoles, and foreign-language releases. AL (for the sake of ease, I’m calling Alejandro Cambronero Albaladejo “AL”) had a collection that tallied 215 back in 2017.

Amy said the video game helps her deal with functional neurological disorder, which causes symptoms including brain fog, tics, tremors, and paralysis.

Interesting, the brain fog and tics. Might that explain why Amy purchased so many copies of the game, propelling her to a world record?

Maybe so.

But how do we explain AL?

Amy With Her Games

—Mitchell Hegman

Source of Original Story and Photo: UPI (Ben Harper)

Precious Dirt

At no point as a creek-fishing, apple-throwing, bike-riding kid in East Helena, Montana, did I entertain any thoughts about buying dirt. Well, as an adult living on a pile of rocks, I find myself buying dirt on a fairly regular basis. And just yesterday, Desiree and I bought a yard of it for several spring planting projects.

First up, we planted an October Glory maple in front of the house. Desiree has been dazzled by fall colors since joining me here in the North Country, where autumn declares itself in dramatic colors. Maples, especially, have held her attention, their leaves turning like quiet signals from another season.

To plant trees around my house, you need to begin by digging a hole (read: prying out rocks here) so you can surround the root ball with some semblance of dirt. In this case, once we had an appropriate hole, we dropped the tree in, and I shoveled dirt down from the back of my truck while Desiree tended the tree and kept it properly oriented (leafy side up, thank you).

I’m sharing photographs of our work.

Up next: fall colors.

Desiree Digging

Me Shoveling Precious Dirt

Desiree Tending the Tree

Desiree with the Planted Tree

—Mitchell Hegman

An All-Thumbs English Conversion

“All thumbs” is one of those phrases that stumbled into English in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, a modest little expression for the universal condition of clumsiness. If someone is “all thumbs,” they are fumbling the small mechanics of life, missing buttons, dropping screws, or turning a simple task into a train derailment, as if their fingers had all fattened into a bulky array of thumbs.

In light of all this, I need to share my absolute amazement at the ability of many young people I know to text on their smartphone with a single thumb. Not only do they text, but they do so accurately at lightning speed. I have witnessed some people one-thumbing a flawless text while driving. Never mind that they should not text and drive at once.

This skill is utterly beyond me. Just for fun, I tried a practice text a few moments ago to check my skill level. Here is what I thumbed on my smartphone: “Do hoof ddigg.”

An all-thumbs English conversion.

Here is what I was attempting to write: “Do good stuff.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Smoke and Cold Smoke

Desiree and I smoked an 11-pound pork shoulder roast. The strategy for smoking meat is to cook at low temperatures while infusing smoke flavor. Smoking meat is less cooking than persuasion, a quiet agreement between low heat and drifting smoke. I generally try to operate at 225°F, which can lead to extended cooking times, especially when targeting an internal temperature of 195°F to ensure maximum tenderness.

In this instance, I slipped the roast into the smoker (with an internal temperature of 40°F) at 5:00 in the morning and didn’t pull it out until 9:00 in the evening.

Sixteen hours is a long vigil for a piece of meat, but that is the bargain we struck.

One of the things that extends the cooking time is “the stall.” The stall is the pork roast’s way of hitting the pause button around 150–170°F, when moisture rises to the surface and evaporates, cooling it like a built-in air conditioner while your smoker keeps trying to heat it up. From the outside, it looks like nothing’s happening, but inside, collagen is slowly melting into gelatin and the meat is quietly becoming tender. Eventually, the moisture runs low, the cooling effect fades, and the roast wakes up from its little spa day and starts climbing in temperature again. The temperature of our roast held stubbornly steady for several hours before it began to rise again.

When it was finished, the pork was tender enough to fall apart at a suggestion, wrapped in a dark, lovely bark formed from little more than salt, pepper, and time. I’m sharing photographs of the roast with the requisite Cold Smoke beer alongside.

Before Smoking

Pulling the Roast at 9:00

After Smoking

—Mitchell Hegman

Plants Growing Naked and Sideways

Given the title of this blog, I owe a bit of explanation.

We are, in fact, discussing a houseplant. A five-finger plant, to be precise. It recently endured an overwatering incident of some consequence and, in what feels like a small act of protest, shed its final two leaves. What remains is a living thing, certainly, but also a bare stalk with aspirations.

In an effort to spare it from drowning and suffering the slow creep of root rot, Desiree tipped the entire operation sideways on the floor, allowing the excess water to seep away.

Practical, yes.

Still, there is something faintly unsettling about coming across a plant lying on its side, as if it has simply decided it has had enough of vertical life.

I’m hoping it rallies, finds its footing, and produces a leaf or two in defiance of recent events. I feel a little sorry for it. For now, though, I can live with naked and sideways.

Naked and Sideways

 —Mitchell Hegman

The Sky Is My Garden (2026 Version)

The sky is my garden, though it refuses all fences. By day, the wind tends it, herding clouds and scattering birds across an open blue field.

By night, it blooms righteous. Stars press outward, electrified above the dark strokes of the mountains, steady and unhurried.

They call this Montana, “Big Sky Country,” but the phrase feels far too small. In summer, the air shimmers and bends, sending ravens warping across the prairie. In winter, at twenty below, the sky sharpens to crystal while the frozen lake below groans in reply.

Clouds rise. Clouds scurry. Clouds roil. Clouds pause. Clouds drift away.

It is a garden that grows in motion and color and gesture, and we are only ever passing through.

Fiery Garden

Stormy Garden

Soft Garden

—Mitchell Hegman