The Stackers versus the Pilers

Sports never interested me as a kid, and I have never followed any professional sports. About all I understand is that when the Packers are playing the Whomevers, it’s a bitter rivalry and somebody is going to drink too much beer while watching and get a little snotty.

Oddly enough, I am entertaining something similar to what I just described right here in my garage. Not the drinking beer and getting snotty part. The rivalry. In my competition, the Stackers are pitted against the Pilers.

I’m talking, of course, about lengths of firewood I have been chopping for the upcoming winter, which can begin on any day of any month here in Montana.

Some lengths I manage to axe into sleek, uniform pieces, making them easy to fit into a cordwood stack. Hence, the Stackers.

Other chunks split into gnarly and misshapen things, with bulbous knots on one end, weird twists of grain, and so forth. These, the Pilers, I heap into a jumbled and entirely disordered pile, something that looks like a Gaudí (drunken) version of a trash mound.

Obviously, I am rooting for the Stackers here. I appreciate a tidy stack. But the knotted chunks readily fit in my woodstove and accept flame just as well as the Stackers.

I’m sharing photographs of the rivals.

The Stackers in Orderly Rows

The Pilers Heaped Together

—Mitchell Hegman

Bitterroot versus Resolve

Surely, I am flawed. At a minimum, I lack proper resolve. Every spring I tell myself I am not going to take any photographs of the bitterroot in bloom since I already have dozens of them. But every year, the sight of them draws me in like a conspiracy theorist to crop circles.

And there I go with my smartphone on camera mode.

To be fair, bitterroot earned their place as our state flower for good reason. First, they are workhorse tough. They will happily live on the open prairie, but will also climb a mountain and thrive at elevation. These pretty flowers shake off both extended drought and sub-zero temperatures. Secondly, they would likely win any beauty contest they enter, at least if I am the judge.

The other day, my resolve melted, per usual, when I found bitterroot on display along our county road.

A Pair of Bitterroot

—Mitchell Hegman

The Chauffeur of Voleville

Something a bit less than a mile down our country road is a place Desiree and I have named Voleville. It’s really nothing more than the mouth of a gully populated with ponderosa pine, sagebrush, and juniper. It earned its name owing to the fact that I released a mess of voles there after live-trapping them from our flower and garden beds.

This spring we’ve been trapping hordes of mice from near the hot tub and occasional wayward chipmunks zipping through the plant beds. As the unofficially designated chauffeur of Voleville, I am always on standby should a captured critter need a lift for release down the road. Yesterday, I drove one mouse and two chipmunks down to Voleville. Mice tend to try and hide as best they can in the traps. Once caught, chipmunks absolutely freak out and fling themselves all over inside the live trap. And while music is said to calm some critters, I have confirmed that listening to Led Zeppelin does not calm a chipmunk in any fashion.

I’ve posted a photograph of one of the chipmunks I drove for release yesterday.

A Chipmunk   

—Mitchell Hegman

Face-to-Face with a Fox

I woke this morning thinking about the time I opened the door at my cabin and found myself face-to-face with a fox. The fox and I, standing no more than fifteen feet apart, just stared at one another. Neither of us said a word. After several rather uncomfortable moments, I closed the door again and tried to carry on with my day.

Turns out you can’t have a normal day if it begins with meeting a fox face-to-face right from the get-go. For the whole day I was wondering, “What was that all about?”

—Mitchell Hegman

Scrawl

While grabbing a few smallish sticks of wood to start a fire in the woodstove to ward off the chill of a mountain morning, I came across a stick covered with scrawl created by some sort of beetle or grub that dined on the wood at some point.

The thing is, the bug that did this, whatever kind it was, appears to have left its signature on the stick. The bug’s “handwriting” is not the best, but I think its name was Robby. I’ve posted a photograph of the stick so you can see for yourself.

Scrawl on a Stick

—Mitchell Hegman

Embracing the Weird

Mountain living can be pretty unconventional. Between wild critters and untamed humans, you never know what to expect from one minute to the next. Last night, by way of example, we visited our neighbors at their campfire.

Turns out, they had a few friends overnighting with them. So along with the standard scattering of folding chairs and stumps arrayed around the fire pit, there was an extra dog rooting around and a naked doll flung off to the side.

I suppose a naked doll might be worth a conversation in most places, but around here we just embrace the weird and gather around the fire, tip a beer, and talk about the latest tree blown down across the road.

Naked Doll

—Mitchell Hegman

A Home for Someone Special

One of the property owners adjoining me decided he would plant a fence along the property line demarcating our parcels. After pounding in a few far-flung treated-wood corner posts, the fencing process languished and then stopped entirely.

Speaking to my neighbor later, he told me he’d opted out of that fence location. Shortly after our conversation, a fence appeared along his access road south of the posts he’d previously planted.

One of these rather lonely posts can be seen from my bay windows and has been greeting my southward gazes for about two years. It recently occurred to me that the post might make a good home for another neighbor: the bluebirds.

I’ve decided to affix a bluebird box to that post, and two others in different locations.

Bluebird boxes on fence posts make excellent sense because fence lines already function like avian boulevards. Mountain Bluebirds, in particular, spend much of their day perched low, scanning open ground for insects with the concentration of snipers. A fence post gives them both a lookout tower and a ready-made nesting site in one neat package.

Here in Montana, bluebirds favor our swaths of open country: pastures, hay fields, ranch land, and any grassy edge where they can swoop down after beetles and grasshoppers. A nest box mounted on a fence post in the open prairie places the home exactly where they already make their living.

It would be a shame to let a good post go to waste.

The Home Post

—Mitchell Hegman