Monkey Flowers, Desiree, Lupine, and Time Gone Wonky

Desiree and I took an early morning drive up Minnehaha Creek Road, just below Rimini. As a quick public service note, the name "Minnehaha" often is incorrectly said to mean "laughing water.'' A more accurate translation yields "water waterfall'' in Dakota.

Accurately translated or not, the Minnehaha drainage is lush and green this year. We saw lovely collections of beargrass, paintbrush, and false hellebore, but we found the most impressive gathering of flowers just off the road, where a small spring provided moisture for a bouquet of monkey flowers attended by lupine. I captured a photograph of Desiree there.

A weird thing happened on the way down. For some reason, the clock on my car’s instrument panel went wonky and threw itself off by five hours. What makes this especially strange is the same thing happened to my automobile’s clock last year when we drove Minnehaha Creek Road. I distinctly remember that because it freaked me out righteously. The time irregularity has never occurred anywhere else. Apparently, some manner of time vortex, or magnetic anomaly, or, well, something-or-other exists on Minnehaha Creek Road. I captured an image of the time on Desiree’s smartphone, alongside the car’s time. By the time we arrived back in Helena, the time had returned to normal.

Monkey Flowers, Desiree, Lupine

Strange Time Phenomenon

—Mitchell Hegman