Assessing the Storm

The rain is converting to snow and flying sideways. Wind has flattened my tired old iris stands on the incline out back. They look like piles of off-color, melting swords. This kind of weather speaks a language the robins and vesper sparrows don’t understand, so they hide in pine whorls that bob up and down when shouldered by brawny gusts.

I know better: you can’t trust your life to a pine tree.

And it’s not the wind and water that wears you down, it’s the carried detritus, the salts, and the overthinking.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Red Herring

As is often the case, I have been using a turn of phrase for many years without understanding the origins of it. In this instance, I’m referring to the expression “red herring,” as used to describe a purposeful distraction.

Living with my island girl, I am much more sensitive to these odd snippets we often throw around in our English language. They can prove confounding to her. After using the phrase the other day, it occurred to me that I had no way of explaining it.

Time to activate the Google Machine.

Turns out, according to the machine, the phrase “red herring” emerged from an actual fish, a herring that’s been heavily salted and smoked until it turns reddish-brown and develops a powerful odor.

The muscular scent is key. A popular story claims these stinky fish were dragged across trails to throw hunting dogs off the scent, but the historical evidence for that tale is pretty thin. English journalist William Cobbett helped popularize the expression in 1807 when he used a supposed childhood experience with a red herring as a metaphor for misleading news reports. Today, a red herring still stands as anything that distracts us from the real issue.

—Mitchell Hegman

An Old Man

While walking down my country road, an old man with a gray beard and long gray hair drove up on his four-wheeler and stopped beside me.

I spoke: “You know, when we were kids throwing rocks around East Helena and setting vacant fields on fire, I never imagined I’d one day see you driving up on me as an old man.”

My good buddy and lakeshore neighbor Kevin laughed from atop his machine.

—Mitchell Hegman

Extreme Sorting

The trees are a righteous mess. I’m referring, of course, to the trees in the latest jigsaw puzzle we are piecing together. The puzzle features a pair of wolves in a winter scene in Yellowstone National Park. The backdrop is a forest comprised of pine trees. What makes the trees difficult is the fact they are without helpful detail because they are out of focus in the original photograph. Also, they are rendered in something of a messy stew of the same drab colors.

The only option for this puzzle is “extreme” sorting. I had to not only sort into groups of similar shades of color, but also further sort out and align pieces of similar shapes into orderly rows.

Ultimately, finding and placing pieces involves a fairly equal mix of rooting through the colors and testing similarly shaped pieces. Often, three or four pieces will “almost” fit before I finally locate the desired piece.

This is a very challenging puzzle. I expect I may have days where I only manage a dozen or so pieces.

The Yellowstone Park Puzzle

Extreme Sorting

—Mitchell Hegman

Crab Walking

After watching an episode of Deadliest Catch, Desiree and I both entertained intense cravings for Alaskan king crab. “Let’s check the current price,” I suggested.

As the price comparisons rolled in, Desiree and I simply gaped at our electronic devices.

“Maybe some potato chips instead,” I proposed.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Long Road to an Apology

While pulling down lengths of split cordwood from a stack outside what I consider our “utility” garage door, it occurred to me that I’m 35 years late on an apology.

Let’s explore this, starting with the garage door.

I’m talking about a third overhead door in our garage. While the other two provide standard access for our automobiles, this door is off in the far north corner and simply opens up to my xeriscape yard. Uyen, my late wife, and I designed the garage with three doors, but by the time we reached the framing phase, I had second thoughts and wanted to eliminate the door.

Uyen and I only rarely fell into tiffs, but this issue led us to something of a prolonged skirmish. “We could save a lot of money,” I reasoned. And I landed on a final note that “we will never use the door.”

In the end, I gave in, and we completed construction with the door in place.

I wound up being correct for the first 33 years we lived in the house. We never used the door. But that changed two years ago when we had a woodstove installed. The small concrete slab outside the door, with easy access through the door, is ideal for cordwood storage.

It’s my go-to place now.

Today, I offer my apologies to Uyen. It took me a while to get here, but she proved prescient in the long run.

Cordwood Outside the Third Door

—Mitchell Hegman

Morning Report, October 18, 2026

I woke with a start when a small moth or some such got caught in my eyebrow as I lay sleeping. I woke, as my buddy Kenny used to say, “going about it like a one-armed man killing snakes.” I very nearly tore myself apart in my efforts to extricate the bug.

In calmer local news, our recent frosty mornings have forced us to harvest the last of our tomatoes. Desiree has been charged with working up an emergency dish in which she can use up the batch. And yesterday, I had to shoot three of Billy’s longhorns in the ass to keep them at a distance from our yard.

Finally, I would like to use this platform to make something of a public service announcement. If you happen to look out in the direction of where I live and see smoke, don’t call it in as a wildfire. It’s just Desiree burning stuff down at the lake in one of her (mostly) controlled fires.

End of morning report.

—Mitchell Hegman