Another Not-So-Inspirational Quote

If the path you are following leads you into a dark and forbidding forest, don’t be afraid.  By all means, follow the path.  Also, pack heat and extra ammunition and don’t be afraid to take sound shots if you hear a weird noise. Remember, you are human.  This is what we do.

--Mitchell Hegman

Weeding the Garden

Yesterday, at mosquito o’clock in the morning, I walked down to Kevin’s garden near the lake to help with weeding.  Gardens are essentially disturbed soil and weeds thrive in disturbed soil.

Quite a galley of weeds have assembled in the good blue soil of the garden.

An interesting thing: the color of soil.  Here in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, when you test the soil for placing a septic system, the test is based on a visual survey of the sides of a test hole and soil color (not on a perc test).  A handful of soil is gathered by the local septic engineer, wetted in his or her hand, crushed into a ball, and the color is then compared to a color chart.  The color indicates such things as the presence of clay or organic materials.  Based on color, the engineer determines drain field suitability and the required length of drainage pipe.  Dark soils, such as that in Kevin’s garden, indicate the presence of organic materials.

I found all the usual suspects as I began weeding the garden: bindweed, mustard, plantain, Chinese clover, and lamb’s quarters.

Lamb’s quarters is a particularly interesting weed.  Fist it goes by many names: lamb’s quarters, pigweed, goosefoot, and wild spinach.  Secondly, it is edible, if not downright delicious.  Moreover, it has more food value than many of the plants we regularly consume.  Delicious, in terms of edible greens, typically mean not having much taste at all—lettuce and celery for example.  I munched a few leaves of lamb’s quarters and found exactly that: not much taste.  This is a very desirable plant according to many people—a good thing, considering a single plant can produce 75,000 seeds.  I have posted two images of lamb’s quarters at the end of the blog.

As I weeded around spindly kohlrabi, onions, and carrots, I began to encounter several weeds unknown to me.  One of these weeds, a kind of tall bad boy, uprooted with fist-sized clumps of soil in a tight root ball.   Another weed grew along the ground and created a virtual green throw rug.  The throw rugs came out mostly intact.  In the meantime, mosquitoes zizzed in my ear and attempted non-permitted drilling on the exposed skin of my arms.

I have heard people claim that weeding the garden is “therapeutic.”  I suppose there is an element of that in weeding.  You feel something both primal and vital as you clear a way for perfect rows of green starts.  But there is also an element of work as you pull industrial-strength weeds. 

Lamb’s quarter has grown tall in one section of the garden.  I am debating an experimental dinner on that.

--Mitchell Hegman

PHOTOS: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/goosefoot

Pasqueflowers (Studies in Light)

Most living things come softly to hard sunlight.  Pasqueflowers are no different.  They are soft on the eye and soft to the touch.  Pasqueflowers, sometimes referred to as prairie crocus, are some of your more quiet neighbors.  They are not particularly loud in color and do not aspire to overtake the landscape with explosive clusters of blossoms.  Instead, they hold aloft a single dim lantern on each stem.  The fifty-cent piece sized blossoms may reach heights of a foot or more, but are just as likely to remain close to the ground.  The color of the flower may range from bluish to purple.

The other day, while on a drive to the top of Hogback Mountain, a dozen or so miles as the crow flies from my house, that girl, my sister, my brother-in-law, and I came upon a patch of pasueflowers.  We were at an elevation near 8,000 feet.  The flowers were growing amid checkerboards of light and shadow at the feet of some weather-twisted whitebark pine.  The colors were muted enough we might have easily missed them if focusing on nearby stands of red paintbrush.  I stopped the truck so all of us could pile out and take a closer look.

Posted today are some studies I made of these pasqueflowers emerging from the shadows.

A word of caution: the fuzzy leaves and stems of pasqueflowers may irritate your skin and all parts of this wildflower are poisonous if ingested.  One of the books I often refer to when identifying flowers noted that some Native American tribes crushed the leaves of this plant and applied them to rheumatic joints as a counter-irritant.

--Mitchell Hegman

First Heat

The first heat of summer has begun to slowly savage our valley.  The tall, green stems of brome grass and crested wheat have gradually bleached to straw and stiffened.  Afternoon heatwaves warp and distend cars crossing the short stretch of gravel road I can see along the pine and juniper hills above my house.  Dust from their passing lifts only a little before ghosting off through the trees.

Though a little rain came late last night, the heat persisted.  Not hot like an empty desert in Nevada, but hot enough for those of us who crossed big rivers and chill mountain streams to get here.

I have never really enjoyed the heat.  My face turns red if I am working in elevated temperatures.  My clothes feel hot and leaden.    

Last night, long after the last light of day grasped at the far side of the Rocky Mountains and then fell into darkness, that girl opened windows throughout our house.  Still, our house did not cool until early this morning.  I slept poorly and dreamed I fell from a ladder while repairing a luminaire secured high against a vaulted ceiling.

I begin this day in utter stillness, tired, having just risen from a bad dream.

--Mitchell Hegman

Thoughts and Observations for Today

— The truth whispered around you is likely the one you should fear.

—The saying “those who can’t do teach” needs to be upgraded.  Those who can't do now work at the Verizon Store.

—Doing nothing has the opposite effect of making me relaxed.  Sitting around completely unnerves me.

—In addition to being provided free food and shelter, my 20 pounds of housecat also has the advantage of not paying attention to what’s on television.

--Mitchell Hegman

Heartbeat

I know people who have permanently saved voicemail messages from deceased loved ones.  These people sometimes play the message so they can hear their loved ones once more.  I have seen several television documentaries about the families of 9/11 victims and the spate of emotions surrounding that tragic event.  A few of the families still keep voicemail recordings of final, unanswered phone calls placed by loved ones trapped inside the doomed Twin Towers.

But imagine hearing the heartbeat of someone you love long after they have died.  I am not talking about hearing a recording of the heartbeat.  I am talking about listening to their actual heart beating in real time.

How would that make you feel?

Posted today is a video about just such a heartbeat.

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-bdOKUmwVI

The Portico Sun

One of my favorite songs from the 1980s is Invisible Sun by The Police.  The song is obscure and moody, but I like it.  This tidbit of information has nothing to do with today’s blog, but I thought I might share anyway.

This blog is actually about that girl being quirky.  

In particular, that girl is peculiar (maybe inventive) about home decoration.  Over the last few months she has been hanging new wall sculptures and moving gewgaws about the house.  One day I come home from town and find two mirrors replaced by one.  A week later I come home and find three wrought iron sculptures hanging on the living room wall.  Pretty rocks and little widgety things migrate about the house on a regular basis.

I love rocks.  I love them more than the song Invisible Sun, in fact.  When I was a kid, my room was basically a pile of rocks.  Well, there were also a few bird’s nests and sticks in there.  And dirty cloths.

Normal people feared my room.

The other day, I peered out my back door and found a metal sun hanging in the arches of my portico.  Hanging such a thing there would never have crossed my mind.  I might have thought about shooting the potato gun from there.  But not that.

It’s good stuff.

That’s what this blog is about.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Blue House

When we were small children we called the blue house just that, the blue house, and we ran past it without thought.

As we learned to ride bicycles, we plainly heard a man and a woman arguing in the house.  We began calling it the “shouting house” and we picked up the pace whenever we rode by.

One day, while learning to drive, I drove past the shouting house and saw police cars and swirling lights.

Murder.

The shouting woman went to jail.  The house fell into disrepair.  Ragweed and mustard grew up alongside the outside walls.  The weeds scratched at the walls when the wind blew.  We renamed the place the “weed house.”  I stopped looking when I drove by.

The other day, I drove past the house.

The house is blue.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Path

If what we become in life is based on what we do, I believe most of us are on the path to becoming cell phones.

--Mitchell Hegman

Summer Love Song

By midday even the sun is brightly drinking from the creek.  Nearby, passing work trucks slow to a crawl and claw around the corner of the county road.  Dust from the trucks rises only a little before sieving through the shade trees like ghostly scarves.

At the deepest hole in the creek, not far away, children count: “One…two…three…JUMP!”

In a splash, they find the water painfully cold and good.

They prance back out of the creek as quickly as they jumped in.

Another truck rolls by.

The children jump in.

--Mitchell Hegman

X,Y,Z, and Sometimes V

Prescription drugs in these United States have more than one name.  As a general rule, a drug is given an official (generic) name as well as a brand (trademark) name.  These names are usually nothing alike.  For example, the drug generically known as eluxadoline is marketed under the trademark name VIBERZI.  This drug is used for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, which is far less science-fictiony (my term) than it sounds.

I find the naming of drugs fascinating.

The generic names given to drugs are virtual explosions of syllables.  These names tend to be long and filled with pronunciation potholes.  Often, such names are a shorthand version of the drug’s chemical name.  All generic names must be approved by (I am not making this up) the United States Adopted Names Council.  The drug you know as Tylenol, by way of illustration, has an approved generic name of acetaminophen. 

Giving a drug a brand name is another story entirely.  This name is usually proffered by the company responsible for developing the drug. Brand names are meant to be catchy.  In recent years, drug manufacturers have been marching clear to the end of the alphabet before naming new drugs.  The letters X, Y, Z, and sometimes V are often included in brand names.  Examples include: Xifaxan, Zyrtec, Zerviate and my all-time favorite, Xyzal.

In the end, all of these drugs can all be pronounced “ik’spensiv.”

Personally, I would prefer a more folksy approach to naming drugs.  I think a name such as “Clamp-Tight” is perfect for a drug that prevents diarrhea.  Maybe “Nervending” could be taken to cease anxiety.  In the meantime, we seem only months away from taking XYZ to cure something, maybe everything.

--Mitchell Hegman

What Would You Think if I Sang Out of Tune?

The other day, on our drive home from Glacier National Park, that girl and I listened to the Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio.  That girl cranked up the volume on Hello, Goodbye and While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  We sang along as high clouds flicked up and over the windshield of our car.   Wide, grassy scarps and endless green grain fields swelled as we neared them.  The mountains of the Rocky Mountain Front high-kicked and bucked along the horizon to our right.

“It’s so amazing I can remember the lyrics after all these years,” that girl commented.

I nodded in agreement.

Everything seemed fitting together as it should.

The Beatles are a singularity.  They are not a single season.  They are all seasons.

Funny, I should feel that way now.  I was seven when I first saw the Beatles playing I Want to Hold Your Hand on The Ed Sullivan show.  I immediately thought them silly and soapy.

I didn’t like them.

Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to The Beatles for the first few years.  Then I heard Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  That album—the first ever concept album—changed everything for me.  I began to listen, more importantly, to hear.

My love for the Beatles reaches back from that album and sprints forward from that album.  That is the nexus to all their music—traditional and experimental.

On we drove, the pair of us, under a sky that really is bigger than all others.  Singing along with the soapy songs and the surreal.  The hours somehow becoming only minutes.      

--Mitchell Hegman

Two Medicine

In simple terms, elevation in Glacier National Park varies from a low of 3,150 feet where the Middle and North Forks of the Flathead River join together near Lake McDonald to 10,466 feet at the highest point of Mt. Cleveland.  But that only begins to tell the story.  Within the park you will find 6 peaks above 10,000 feet and some 32 mountains cresting above 9,100 feet.  Some of the most ancient sedimentary stone in North American can be found in Glacier National Park.  All told, 1.6 billion years of history can be read in the stone.  The story is one of sediment deposited by an ancient sea, sudden tectonic upheavals, and centuries of Ice Age glaciers carving deep valleys through the stone.

Today, the park is a place of sensory overload.  Masses of upheaved blocks of stone and sharp mountain peaks shred passing clouds or push them into high storms that stall and remain grappling with the stony formations.  Rivers and creeks roar as water somersaults down from the snowfields yet held at elevation.  Clear lakes reflect with mirror perfection.  This time of year, the air is perfumed by vast washes of ivory beargrass plumes.

I have never been able to “drive through” Glacier Park or the area surrounding.  My expeditions are, instead, comprised of a series of stops and brief wanderings from my car.  I try the impossible task of taking it all in.  To view.  To hear.  The feel.  To capture my experience within photographic images.

There exists, in my view, a level of scenic and spiritual beauty that cannot be exceeded.  Glacier Park is at that level.  Other places may reach that level (for example the redwood forests of California), but the level cannot be surpassed.

In a word: breathtaking.

Yesterday, that girl and I drove home by way of Marias Pass.  We stopped for lunch at Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier and then diverted to Two Medicine before driving home under the big sky along the east side of the Rocky Mountain Front.  Posted are a few photographs from the day.

--Mitchell Hegman

Geologic information thanks to: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/education/geology.htm

Polebridge, Montana

Polebridge, Montana, is the last remote outpost before the dirt road that brought you there climbs into the lower belly of the Canadian wilderness some 22 miles to the north.  The town boasts a population of something near 130 in summer and about 70 during the winter.  Two businesses are located in Polebridge.  Since you are still in Montana, one business is the obligatory bar: The Northern Lights Saloon (a simple log cabin).  The other business is Polebridge Mercantile.

That’s about it.

The Mercantile is just a bit over 100 years old.  Not much has changed in the last 100 years.  The “town” remains off grid.  You will not find cell service and, to date, no power lines have made their way in.   The limited power used by the business are provided by generators and, more recently, solar PV systems.

The mercantile bakes pastries that are to die for.   Sweets produced with the local bounty of huckleberries are most noteworthy.

The landscape around Polebridge is indescribably beautiful.  The tiny town is cradled between the heavily timbered Whitefish Range and the sharp and improbable stone peaks of Glacier National Park.  The North Fork of Flathead River runs big, fast, and aquamarine through the crooked valley between the mountains.

Yesterday, that girl and I drove to Polebridge and then drove on from there to the super-remote Bowman Lake and Kintla Lake inside Glacier.  Though the roads are rugged and unpaved, the trip is well worth the drive.  Posted today are some photographs from our day trip to Polebridge and beyond.

--Mitchell Hegman

An Adventure

That girl and I are presently staying in small cabin at Lake Five Resort.  The resort is just outside the West Glacier entrance to Glacier National Park.  The resort is located in a forest of tall tamarack and pine near the waters of a clear lake.  Bear grass is in full bloom in the understory all around us.  Some of the white plumes reach as high as my chest.

Our cabin does not have a bathroom.  To use the restroom or take a shower you must go on something of an adventure.  You must wander outside, navigating either a long boardwalk or a gravel pathway to reach the common bathroom.  Last night, in total forest darkness, I crashed into a wrought iron bench on the boardwalk while trying to reach the facilities.  This morning it is raining hard enough that I am considering wetting the bed to avoid the adventure.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Melting Sky

We experienced another fantastic sunset last night.  The sky to our northwest remained clear and gradually fell into deeper shades of blue as the sun slipped away.  To the northeast, a voluminous rack of clouds blushed red and orange.  The clouds seemed as if melting above the lake as they gradually oozed toward darkness.

Posted are a couple photographs I captured from just behind my house.

--Mitchell Hegman

Crash Course

For some inexplicable reason, I awoke early this morning with this question on my mind: Why do we call a quick training session a crash course?

This question persisted in my mind as I fed my remaining 20 pounds of housecat and made my coffee.  As soon as I finished that, I fired up my computer and Googled for an answer.

Seems, oddly enough, that “getting a crash course” may have originated from a surprisingly literal meaning.  A thread at www.reddit.com/r/etymology quoted this excerpt from Knights of the Air, a 1929 history of aviation:

…to demonstrate how pilots might crash and still escape injury.  The crash course, as Sperry outlined it, would have three stages.  The student would first crash into swamps, primarily to overcome the fear of crashing…

--Mitchell Hegman

The Altered Forest

On Sunday, my daughter and I spent an hour or so wandering through Sculpture in the Wild.  Sculpture in the Wild is a park filled with outdoor sculptures located in the native forest near Lincoln, Montana.  Artists from all over the world have been creating sculptures, using a mix of natural and manufactured materials, in the forest there since 2014.  

Entrance to the park is free.

I particularly enjoy how you are both enabled and encouraged to interact with the sculptures as you stroll the pathways through the woodlands.  Some works, you walk through.  Others you feel a need to touch or circle about in order to change how the sunlight, shadow, and surrounding landscape plays with the features.  Near the sculptures, visitors to the park often create their own simple works.  Stone cairns.  Arrangements of sticks.  A mix of both.

Wild animals walk through and feed in the park.

Posted today are three photographs from our wanderings through the park.  The photographs by no means capture the immensity or sensations of visiting the park in person.

--Mitchell Hegman

It Takes a Thief (Yellowstone Trip, Part Two)

If there exists a definitive list of dos and don’ts for camping, one of the “don’ts” near the very top of the list should be this: Don’t slam the keys to your locked car inside the trunk of said car.

Camping is, to begin with, a celebration of minimalism.  You set out with as few resources as you possibly require for survival and then try to survive for a few days at some remote location.  Hopefully (or not) a location without cell service.  Your car in such case is definitely a required resource.

While camping alongside the cabins at Campfire Lodge Resort with us (during a seemingly never-ending rainstorm), a person we shall refer to as X slammed the keys to their locked car inside the trunk of said locked car.  As mentioned at the outset, I am proposing a kind rule against this sort of thing.  Access to your car is critical while you are at any such remote location.

Once the keys are locked in the trunk, you are left with few options.

One option is to abandon the car, all belongings inside, and flee to a small city where you can easily stretch a dollar.  Another option is to call a locksmith (not a valid option when camping at a location without cell service).  A third option is to panic wholesale and run off into the woods breaking low-hanging limbs off trees as you go.  A fourth option is to take the road less-traveled.  What I mean by this is: Find someone with experience in breaking into locked automobiles.  Possibly the nearest car thief.

Though option number one had sparking possibilities (everyone enjoys stretching a dollar), the fourth option was chosen by X in this case.  As luck would have it, the camp “handyman” thought he might be able to “access the vehicle.”  He immediately found in his workshed a length of wire with a hook on the end and a crowbar.

By prying open the door just a little and fishing the wire down to catch the door lock knob, the handyman  managed to pull it up to unlock the door.  He did this, and I am not kidding here, in less than two minutes.

Happy, curious campers once more!

Honestly, I wish to thank our local handyman.  He refused all offers for a gratuity in exchange for his services and simply suggested we have a great rest of the day.  Last we saw of him, he was zooming off through the woods on his four-wheeler, ghost-like, not breaking a single branch along the way.

So far as his skills at accessing locked vehicles—the phrase ignorance is bliss comes to mind.

--Mitchell Hegman

You Are in Bear Country (Yellowstone Trip, Part One)

Cabin 11 at Campfire Lodge Resort is located quite exactly where Cabin Creek flows into the Madison River.  This particular place is probably more interesting right now than normal.  For one thing, Cabin Creek is positively over-filled and violent with taupe-colored water.  By all appearances, a significant run-off is still at work within the steep mountains from which the creek originates.  I am also guessing a very recent storm of some intensity has also added rain water to the creek.

The creek is loud enough you cannot carry on a conversation while standing nearby.   The water flails at the banks and lashes at the bed of boulders along its chosen path.

The second interesting thing is that the Madison River is running clear.  Where the creek merges with the river, the beige water does not mix with the clear water of the river.   The river immediately below where the creek plows into the river has a clear half and a murky half.  The waters do not fully mix until reaching a bend further downstream.

Campfire Lodge Resort was established in 1922 and features several very rustic log cabins amid tall, riverside pines.  Cabin 11, for example, tilts considerably toward Cabin Creek.  To be fair, this may have resulted from the earthquake responsible for the formation of Quake Lake a few miles downstream.  That quake, in August of 1959, dropped some sections of land near Cabin Creek twenty feet as two gigantic tectonic plates within the Madison Range shifted at once.  The quake was responsible for the loss of 28 lives.  This cabin—as well as cabin 9 where I overnighted—offer a mix of technologies from every decade since 1922.

Posted everywhere you look around the resort are signs reminding you that “You Are in Bear Country.”  Food and garbage must not be readily accessible to bears.

I had to literally percolate coffee in the type of pot you set on the burner of a stove because our cabin does not have a modern coffee maker.

Here is a tip on percolating your coffee: just don’t do it.  At the very least, don’t walk away from the stove to tease your significant other while the “coffee” is “brewing.”   This kind of brewing process is something akin to catching Cabin Creek in a pot.  You know how creeks behave.  They are always splashing up and trying to get out.

Campfire Lodge Resort is, ultimately, a fun place to stay.  I am guessing most people would think this is exactly how Montana should look and feel.  In the end, you cannot ask for more than that.  

Posted is a photograph of one of the cabins at Campfire Lodge Resort and photograph of a fly fisherman at the place where Cabin Creek meets the Madison River.

--Mitchell Hegman

Run

A song by Snow Patrol.

NOTE:  I may not be able to post blogs for the next few days.  If not, I will see you again on Monday!

--Mitchell Hegman

Alternate Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOBs8dU4Pb8

Up the Mountain, Down Through the Wildflowers

That girl and I spent Monday at the cabin.  While there, I completed my “homemade” kitchen light (see the photograph below).  That girl finished installing blinds on a window and prepared for some extended stays this summer.

After finishing all of that early in the afternoon, we drove the Forest Service road up into the high stack of mountains above our little valley.  The road soon turned rugged and impassable to all but four-wheel-drive vehicles.  I switched my truck into four-wheel-drive and crawled up the flanks of the Continental Divide—up the mountains through shattered remnants of blow-down trees that had slashed across the road and only recently been cleared by crews with chainsaws.

At the top, we walked to the edge of a clearing to take in the snowcapped mountains across the Blackfoot Valley.

With my truck in four-low, we trickled back down through cuts in the mountain stone, pine forests, green grass, and wildflowers.

Wildflowers are the thing.  I have trouble driving past them.  I have an innate need to stop for a closer look.  That girl and I must have stopped well over a dozen times so we could scramble from the truck and poke at the wildflowers.  Photographing flowers is among my favorite pastimes.

Posted are a couple photographs of blue virgin’s bower.  Though not as showy as some flowers, they have a striking shape.  They range in the mountain chains extending from New Mexico to Montana.  Also posted is a mixed patch of lupine and paintbrush, and, last but not least, a fairyslipper orchid.  Though not much larger than your thumbnail, fairyslippers are ever a show-stopper.

--Mitchell Hegman

All Signs

I’ve been adding things up:

—Always on the go.

—Forgetting important appointments.

—Running in place.

—Neglecting my own health.

According to an advertisement I recently saw, I’m a busy young mother with too much to do!

--Mitchell Hegman

The Wall of Birdsong

Each morning now, as first light flutters up against the mountains to our east, I am brought awake by the collective of songbirds singing outside my house.  Though potentially discordant, with trilling meadowlarks upstaging chickadees and vesper sparrows lilting alongside bluebird’s twittering through their songs of dawn, the birds somehow manage a loud, sweet symphony.

I often remain in my bed for a few minutes, listening to the birdsong choir.  My house is just remote enough that beyond the immediate birds singing here there are other, more distant birds, singing.  Only rarely does extraneous noise bite into the morning music.

It satisfies me to listen.

This morning, as I lay near the open window of my bedroom, listening, I thought about the famous (now infamous) music producer, Phil Spector.  Spector, in shaping some of the greatest rock hits of the 1960s, created what he called a “wall of sound.”   In his own words, the music was “a case of augmenting, augmenting.”  Spector added strings, woodwind, and brass to rock songs.  He saturated every second of a song.  In the studio, Spector might overlay several instruments to create one sound.  He used multiple microphones at once.

The birds are something like that.  The first hour is a wall of birdsong.

--Mitchell Hegman

Wrong Number

I must admit, in some ways I miss our old telephone land lines.  I don’t miss the oversized, permanently tethered technology itself.  I don’t miss the clamoring ringtones.

I miss the randomness of wrong numbers.

Back then, because you had to dial numbers, rather than select them from a menu, you often dialed and received calls meant for someone else.  Inverting two numbers was common.

Years ago, on a fairly regular basis, a pair of inverted numbers from out there someplace often landed phone calls for “Rachel” on my phone.

I received enough of these calls that I eventually worked out a way to answer when I picked up the phone and someone asked for Rachel: “I’m sorry, Rachel is not here.  She just left.  But did you hear the good news?   She’s pregnant with sextuplets!  Goodbye.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Solving the Beer Problem

Few things fit together more naturally than metal music and beer.  This has been proven annually in Wacken, Germany.  Every August, the Wacken Open Air music festival attracts some 75,000 heavy metal music devotees and enough bands to keep playing for three days.

The problem has been beer.

Not enough beer, I mean.

On average, over the course of the three-day event, each festival attendee consumes more than a gallon of beer.  This year, festival organizers completed a permanent infrastructure project to solve the beer shortage problem.  A four-mile underground beer pipeline was installed to provide a constant source of beer.  The pipeline operates with enough pressure to pour six beers in six seconds.

In the unlikely event some metal festival goers want water, a pipeline for water was also routed to the festivals grounds.

--Mitchell Hegman

Photo: Wacken Open Air

Coffee

Here is my morning thus far:

My television will not output sound.  I can see talking heads, but they are silent.

A mouse got inside my house and has been flinging itself along the baseboards of my living room and den.  After watching the mouse dart behind my entertainment center, I located my remaining 20 pounds of housecat, scooped him up, and placed him at the spot where the mouse disappeared behind the entertainment center.  He immediately freaked out and trotted off to the door and meowed to get out.

I had to shut down my undersink water filtration system because the flow control started to screech and moan.  Seriously, it did.  Sounded like an entire haunted house.

My internet service is intermittent.  Yesterday, I placed a call to my provider.  Seems I need a new wireless router.

It has been a rough first hour over here.

Coffee…at least I have that going for me!

--Mitchell Hegman

It’s a Small World

I just watched a big red ant go limping past my left foot.  The big red and was limping because a small red ant had clamped onto one of the big red ant’s rear legs with its mandibles and was clinging on like a sort of living ball and chain.

Honestly, the big red ant didn’t seem bothered in the least by the little black ant.  Off to the far horizon limped the big red ant, dragging along the small black ant. 

Almost human.

--Mitchell Hegman