Up Crazy, Down Crazy

Legend holds that The Crazy Mountains were originally called the “Crazy Woman Mountains” by the Crow Tribe living in the area. The Crow named them that for a “crazy” white woman who lived all alone amid the stark peaks following the murder of her settler family by marauding Natives during the early migration westward.  This story is used in "Jeremiah Johnson,” the movie starring Robert Redford.

The Crazies are my favorite mountain range.  They are, put in simple terms, an explosion of stone and timber—an up-blast from the Yellowstone River and the floor of the plains.  Nearly every time I drive near the Crazies, I find that I must stop, climb out from the car, and take them in for a bit. These are powerful mountains.  They are wild to this day, having one of the last healthy populations of wolverines left to this water, stone, and grass landscape of ours.

Up crazy, those mountains.

I would like to end with that, but cannot.  This is a down crazy world, too.  Yesterday, one of my dearest friends came home to a cold house.  Normally, the house is warm because his live-in girlfriend of many years faithfully tends to the woodstove because she craves the heat. 

Odd, the chill.

My friend called out his girlfriend’s name to no response.  Assuming she had fallen into a deep sleep during one of her normal afternoon naps, my friend walked back to the bedroom.  He saw her there and touched the skin of her leg.

He knew instantly.  He knew even before he saw the pistol in the bedding.

Down crazy, that woman.

--Mitchell Hegman

(Today, I am going to help my friend rid the house of that fucking bed.)