Between each second’s tick of an antique clock resides an eternity—a quiet forever without despair, where all of our departed friends and loved ones have gathered. And let’s imagine, contrary to Sylvia Plath, that this isn’t a place where stars are “grinding, crumb by crumb, our own grist down to its bony face.” What if, instead, between each tick of the clock, the dead gather to play croquet and lavish one another with compliments?
I am the type of person who learns by making mistakes. The biggest problem with that is, I haven’t yet figured out what kind of mistake I need to make to either balance my checkbook or convince my wife that I’m capable of dressing myself appropriately.
—Mitchell Hegman
Water can be wicked. On this spectrum, you have floods on the extreme, treacherous end, and on the other end, you find gradual leaks. I would further classify gradual leaks as insidious. Some leaks may go unnoticed for years, all the while causing damage to water systems or structures.
When we were at the cabin a couple of
weeks ago, Desiree noticed a discolored spot where the ceiling meets the
outside wall in the loft. “The wall looks burned here,” she announced.
I immediately stepped closer for a
better look. “That’s water damage,” I said grimly. “We have a leak in the
roof.”
A quick investigation revealed that a
rubber roof jack for a plumbing vent pipe was inverted on the roof, allowing
water to pool around the vent and seep in alongside the PVC pipe. A week after
discovering the leak, I opened up the wall to evaluate the extent of the
damage. What I found was something my buddy Rodney terms “ungood.” Obviously,
water had been leaking inside for many years. The insulation was soaked, and
the framing members were rotting and infested with mold.
It’s sinister how such extensive
damage can go unnoticed for so long. Without a sound and only drop by drop, the
water invaded the cabin wall’s inner space. Upon reaching the fiberglass
batting, the water wicked laterally, spreading deeper inside while feeding
fungus and decay. I have posted a photograph of the wall after I opened it up.
You’ll notice the hair dryer I duct-taped to the vacuum as a means to dry out
the spaces within the wall.
—Mitchell Hegman
Desiree has been wanting to burn a heap of branches and dead twigs she trimmed from the pines and willows lining the drive from the main road to our cabin. Yesterday, given a calm day with ample snow on the ground, she put a match to the trimmings.
Desiree enjoys a fire. As I warmed
myself by the fire of her making, I thought again about Buckminster Fuller’s
quote: “Fire is the sun unwinding from the tree's log.” Years of sunshine were
required to feed energy into the limbs and twigs Desiree had stacked onto the
fire.
The fire grew quickly, unraveling all
those years and deconstructing every limb and branch submitted to the thriving
flames. It’s astonishing how quickly we can unwind the sun—and equally
surprising how good it feels to stand by, watching the flames scissor higher
and higher, our faces growing pink with released heat.
—Mitchell Hegman
For the last week or so, I’ve been lighting a fire in the wood stove every morning as soon as I get up (read 4:00 a.m. here) to give the house a boost in heat. Within a couple of hours, I can usually raise the temperature in the living room by five or six degrees. Since the days have remained reasonably warm, I let the fire die out by mid-morning.
Naturally, the fires produce ashes,
which I must clean out from time to time. As I was doing so recently, I
recalled a phrase I’ve heard on occasion: “getting your ashes hauled.” Oddly
enough, the phrase is a euphemism for having sex. Curious about the origins of
such a bizarre expression, I consulted the interweb.
Apparently, the phrase “hauling
ashes” emerged in the early 20th century. By the 1920s and 1930s, it had become
popular in jazz and blues music, often used humorously or discreetly in song
lyrics. Over time, it became a colorful euphemism across broader American
slang, known for its playful, suggestive nature.
I’m posting a (not sexy) photograph
of ashes I’m about to haul away.
—Mitchell Hegman
I asked the internet what the life expectancy of a rabbit in the wild might be. The answer turned out to be a mere 1 or 2 years, though under optimal conditions, a rabbit might reach 3 to 5 years. Granted, rabbits are cute, but they have it pretty rough. They reside near the bottom of the food chain. Where I live, a host of predators have rabbits on the menu: coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, and a variety of raptors. And, of course, they are stalked by disease.
Yesterday, I found a dead rabbit on
the concrete apron in front of my garage door. The scene was both jarring and
weirdly serene. Though stiff and cold, the rabbit appeared as though
sleeping—no blood, not a single hair misplaced, no awkward pose.
Strange.
I was immediately filled with
questions. What ended the rabbit’s life? Heart attack? An internal malignancy?
Why did the rabbit come to die in that spot?
You can’t leave a rabbit lying dead
at the front of your house and expect to carry on in an ordinary fashion. Given
this, I gingerly carried the stiffened rabbit out onto the prairie and laid it
on the ground amid some sagebrush. One way or another, the rabbit is now
provender for something either bigger or smaller.
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—Mitchell Hegman
I tend to listen to music throughout the day. After waking in the morning, I watch the news on television while drinking coffee. After an hour or so, I flick off the television and crank up my stereo, leaving the music on for the rest of the day and into the early evening. Music is a constant as I drive. I have a boombox at my cabin, and one of my first actions upon arriving is to turn it on. My chosen music is something like a constant, pleasant breeze that accompanies and reassures me. I drift in and out of paying attention to the songs as needed.
Just to see what it felt like, I
purposely turned off my music and tried puttering around the house in
silence—just me and my own thoughts to fill the gaps as I fluttered from one
task to the next. Left unaccompanied, my mind, I soon discovered, wanders off
and pushes rocks off cliffs. It tips over full trash bins and screams at
anything passing by. It runs off to find an anthill to kick.
Apparently, I need music to nudge me
back on track when my mind begins to wander.
My music is playing again.
—Mitchell Hegman
I watched an interesting case involving a murderess on the investigative crime series Forensic Files. Before murdering her husband and staging the scene to look like a suicide, the woman in question had engaged in a string of strange and violent acts with other men. One previous boyfriend had broken up with her after an argument. Well, the argument wasn’t as strong a reason to end things as the fact that she had lit him on fire while he lay sleeping in his bed after their tiff.
I gave this a little thought. I’m
pretty sure I would also break up with someone if they set me on fire following
a squabble. I don’t think that qualifies as “normal behavior,” no matter how
abstract a concept that is.
—Mitchell Hegman
Montana wouldn’t be Montana without
throwing an inclement twist in the weather at you. Yesterday, in this
tradition, Desiree and I found ourselves driving across an open, summer-cured
expanse of rangeland before abruptly entering a churning storm front—a virtual
wall of falling snow extending from the uppermost reaches of the sky to the
grasslands before us.
At once, we penetrated the undulating
wall and entered winter.
Caught within swirls of snow, we
ascended the whiplash curves to the crest of Flesher Pass and then descended
into the Upper Blackfoot Valley and full-on snowscapes. “I love it,” Desiree
said as we turned off the main highway and onto the unplowed road leading us
toward a narrow mountain valley and our cabin. We stopped for photographs when
we reached the bridge across the Blackfoot River, and stopped again before
reaching the cabin so Desiree could pose among a stand of snow-covered pines.
“Winter is pretty,” Desiree declared.
“Yep, I’ll give you that.”
—Mitchell Hegman
Following is a list of lesser-known mistakes:
—Mitchell Hegman
I don’t owe any particular person an apology, but I do need to make a small self-correction. This has to do with something I often carp about: people leaving their empty shopping carts near where they parked their cars rather than pushing them back to the store or to the nearest cart return corral.
After finishing our shopping at a
local grocery store, Desiree and I pushed our cart out the front door and
headed for the car. Before long, we fell in behind a man who was slowly making
his way along the sidewalk with his cart. His slow pace and obvious, halting
gait revealed legitimate issues with walking. As providence would have it, he
led us all the way to our car, which was parked only two spots away from his.
While we loaded our groceries into
the car, the man did the same. After finishing, he pushed his cart against the
wall of the store and slowly wobbled back to his car, struggling to stay
upright the whole time. Watching him, I imagined how difficult it would be for
him to make his way all the way from the cart return to his car. With that in
mind, I coupled his cart with mine and returned both of them. In the future,
I’ll try to remember that not every cart has been abandoned thoughtlessly.
—Mitchell Hegman
Within scaffolds of clouds, my dear, you will find the waxing moon. Richard Brautigan once wrote: “The moon is Hamlet on a motorcycle coming down a dark road.” That’s not the right image for us. Sometimes, Brautigan tended to carry his metaphors not just one, but two bridges beyond where most of us are willing to go. And, yes, I did just explain that with my own metaphor.
Tonight, my dear, the moon is
delicious.
There, we have crossed just one
bridge.
—Mitchell Hegman
My neighbor has what you would term a large disposable income. I have a modest disposable income. While I can purchase a few pretty, fist-sized rocks at the gem show and lug them home in a plastic bag, he can buy multi-ton boulders, have them shipped in on oversized rigs, and then set them strategically about his property with a crane.
He is actually doing so as I write
this.
The boulders in question rolled in
(the huge trucks rumbling, I might add) from the granite formations within the
Boulder Batholith amid the Elkhorn Mountains. The boulders are impressive, some
approaching the size of a small automobile. Given that granite weighs 165
pounds per cubic foot, I’m thinking most of these monsters weigh somewhere
north of 30,000 pounds. And, me being me, I love rocks of any size, so I
approve.
I am posting a series of images of
the boulders, including one featuring a crew setting one at the fork of the
road in front of our house and two with Desiree (instead of a Cold Smoke beer)
near more boulders as a reference for size.
—Mitchell Hegman
On a drive home after a trip to town, my car’s sophisticated (read: “annoying” fifty percent of the time) electronic monitoring system alerted me to a low tire on the rear passenger side. I immediately flipped the car around and headed to the tire shop. I determined long ago that a low tire is usually an indication of a puncture caused by something like a nail or screw.
As soon as the tech at the shop
removed the tire, he spotted a nail lodged between two sets of treads. After
repairing the tire, he handed me the nail, which turned out to be a large
sinker, and I set out for home again.
While driving home this time, I came
across a particularly annoying piece of “litter” just off the Frontage Road: a
cushion from a sofa. I actually noticed it a week ago. This time, I stopped and
tossed it into the back of my car. Below are photographs of the nail and sofa
cushion, each displayed with a can of Cold Smoke beer for an accurate reference
of relative size.
—Mitchell Hegman
When I was a boy, nothing pleased me more than an opportunity to feed and poke at a campfire. I quickly learned that each and every fire has its own look and—for lack of a better term—personality. The stacks of wood varied in shape, size, and combustibility, and ambient conditions shifted each time. The flames danced across a wide color spectrum, beginning with yellow and edging into powder blue. I learned to appreciate unique aspects of each fire, and since tending my first, I have developed a sort of oneness with each fire I tend.
For the last couple of days, the
overnight temperatures have dipped low enough to prompt me to start fires in
our new wood stove. The stove features a glass door, allowing me to watch the
fire. I can witness the first flames wavering, tentatively exploring the
thin-split kindling. To begin, I pull open the door to let a rush of air urge
the flames deeper and higher into the cross-stacked logs. Soon, orange flames
waver up, scissoring into the wood. Before long, the entire stack is engulfed
in flames fringed with crawlers of blue, and the first ghosts of heat issue
forth.
This is my fire, and with modulations
of the damper and the occasional addition of a split from a round, I train the
fire to consume the wood at a rate that pleases me. I watch as the logs
gradually crumble and collapse into a deep red bed of pulsating embers. Heat
presses against me if I stand nearby, and at some point, both I and the fire
become intimate and ageless.
—Mitchell Hegman
I read a story about a pair of “influencers” who drowned not long after refusing to wear lifejackets while taking a small launch boat to shore following a party on a yacht off the Brazilian coast.
First, we need to figure out what an
“influencer” is. According to ChatGPT: “A social media influencer is a person
who has built a following on social media platforms (like Instagram, YouTube,
TikTok, or Twitter) and can influence the opinions, behaviors, and purchasing
decisions of their audience. These individuals are typically known for their
expertise, personality, or unique content in a specific area, such as fashion,
fitness, travel, gaming, or beauty.”
The two influencers in question,
Aline Tamara Moreira de Amorim, 37, and Beatriz Tavares da Silva Faria, 27,
were found dead after their launch was swamped and sank off a stretch of
Brazil's coast known as the Devil's Throat. Both women were health and fitness
influencers and had refused to wear life preservers because they were taking
selfies and were concerned the safety wear would interfere with their tanning.
“Well, I guess they died with nice
tan lines,” Desiree remarked when I related the story to her.
—Mitchell Hegman
A lot of people in my hometown called potatoes “spuds.” As near as I can tell, potatoes are called "spuds" because of a tool once used in their cultivation. The term "spud" originally referred to a type of small digging tool used to remove weeds or prepare soil for planting, and it eventually became associated with digging up potatoes. In 19th-century English slang, "spud" came to mean the potato itself, likely because of this connection with digging up tubers.
My apologies to all the potatoes out
there, but they are not terribly romantic. Potatoes are rather thick and
bulky—not sexy like string beans or curvy like peppers. And, remember, they
once caused a famine in Ireland. Yet, given the proper treatment, they can
carry the weight of a good meal. Yesterday, Desiree and I worked together to
produce a brace of perfectly beautiful baked potatoes. This required bacon, of
course, and a three-part cooking regimen involving the microwave, oven, and an
active finish on the grill outside.
I am sharing a picture of Desiree
with our lovely spuds.
—Mitchell Hegman
ME: “Why is there an eggshell with seeds in it in our laundry room?”
DESIREE: “I’m going to start some
plants.”
ME: “In an eggshell?”
DESIREE: “Yes.”
ME: “But why in an eggshell?”
DESIREE: “They say that’s the best
way to germinate seeds.”
ME: “Who are they?”
DESIREE: “Your best friend.”
ME: “Okay, remind me, who is my best
friend?”
DESIREE: “Your best friend, Google.”
ME: “Got it. I can run with that.”
Following is a quick explanation my
friend Google provided:
“Eggshells
are almost entirely calcium carbonate, which is one of the most essential
nutrients for thriving plants. As they break down, the eggshells enrich the
soil with calcium and nitrogen, which the plant's roots will absorb and put to
use as it grows.”
—Mitchell Hegman
Some things make sense on the surface—they are instinctive, and you don’t need to dive deeply to know it’s the right thing to do. A perfect example of this is opening the door for someone who is carrying something. It’s an automatic human response.
Another action that falls into this
category is placing a rock on top of a post when you come across one in the
middle of nowhere. It just makes sense to find a rock and place it on top of
the post—no need for explanation.
Yesterday, I passed by a lone fence
post that had been recently pounded into the ground at the edge of what we call
Big Tire Gulch. I immediately noticed that someone had placed a smooth,
roundish rock on top. This pleased me so much that I stopped and captured a
photograph. Had someone else not done so, I would have felt compelled to find a
rock for the post myself.
—Mitchell Hegman
It seems like it has taken me forever to figure this out, but the Beatles were correct: all you need is love.
—Mitchell Hegman
If someone wanted to squeeze valuable information out of me (assuming I had any), they wouldn’t need to shove me inside a torture chamber and twiddle with me. All they would need to do is hand me a pipe wrench and force me to either do some plumbing or spill the beans. I would spill everything I knew—and then some—to avoid plumbing. And the only thing I like less than plumbing is plumbing with galvanized steel piping, especially for water.
Here’s the thing: at some point,
galvanized pipe will deteriorate (in the form of rust) and then leak.
When I constructed my house
thirty-three years ago, I did my best to use copper, brass, and plastic
fittings throughout the plumbing system. Unfortunately, I ended up with
galvanized fittings in two locations. The first location was the main shutoff
valve, where the water emerges in my crawlspace. That section sprung a leak and
flooded my crawlspace in November 2020.
Yesterday, when I pulled out my
space-age-looking cluster of reverse osmosis water filters to change them, I
discovered a leak in the ½-inch galvanized cap used where my filtration system
is tied in.
Here’s the thing: it’s plumbing. It’s
in a bad spot to reach. And I know a guy—who is not me—who can fix it. Below, I
am sharing pictures of my plumbing issues.
—Mitchell Hegman
Our sunroom has become one of my favorite places. I go in there regularly for what I think of as five-minute vacations. To begin, I have always liked houseplants. I started tending my own houseplants in my early twenties and have been doing so ever since. Our sunroom is something of an eclectic jungle comprised of incongruent species. A fair swath of the room is dominated by a hoya, a plant originating from a cutting taken from one my grandmother first grew in the 1940s. Nearby, you will find five orchids that thrive on the cubes of ice given to them on a weekly basis. And, of course, you will find our lemon tree, chives, two newly started tomato plants, an ivy, a begonia, snake plants, a geranium, lemongrass, some kind of weird potato thing Desiree just started, and much more.
This time of year, sunlight gently
shoulders against me while I stand under the sunroom’s curved glass in the late
afternoon. A light scent of good earth fills the entire space after watering
the plants. I enjoy floating about the room, taking in the verdant green colors
even as, just outside the windows, the Montana landscape locks down all growth
in preparation for winter. Soon, this will be a green oasis amid the snowscape
outside.
I am sharing two photographs from the
sunroom. Please note, as a proper reference for size, the can of Cold Smoke
beer I placed on the floor in the full sunroom image.
—Mitchell Hegman
Dunedin, New Zealand, a modest town
of some 135,000 inhabitants, is not anti-hugging, but some folks
there—specifically airport officials—want people to hug quicker. Travelers
leaving Dunedin’s airport now have a three-minute limit on goodbye hugs in the
drop-off area. The idea is to prevent traffic jams. To that end, signs were
posted in September warning of the "max hug time."
Airport CEO Dan De Bono said three
minutes is enough time to say goodbye and avoid awkwardly long embraces,
adding, “We do not have hug police.” However, lingering hugs can continue in
the parking lot, where 15 minutes are free. Implementing the limited hugging
time stirred plenty of debate in Dunedin, but for me, reading this from afar, I
think visiting a place where a noteworthy problem is hugging too long might be
exciting.
Source: AP
Desiree and I are presently in Great Falls because I have a teaching engagement here today. Yesterday, not long after arriving in Great Falls, we visited Giant Springs State Park, which is home to the Roe River. According to Wikipedia: “The Roe River runs from Giant Springs to the Missouri River near Great Falls, Montana, United States. The Roe River is only 201 feet (61 m) long at its longest constant point and had been named the World's Shortest River by the Guinness Book of World Records before Guinness eliminated the category in 2006.”
Desiree and I both enjoyed visiting
the park. We wandered around by the Roe River for a while and then visited a
public fish pool at the adjacent fish hatchery. The pool teemed with large
trout, which you can feed by purchasing a handful of fish food from one of the
coin-operated dispensers.
Below are photos from our visit to
the park. Unfortunately, I was unable to hold a can of Cold Smoke beer next to
the fish for a size reference, but many of them exceeded 24 inches in length
and are quite chubby from being fed by tourists.
Desiree and I followed an older man into Home Depot while making our shopping rounds in town. The man displayed a decidedly crooked gait and obviously struggled a little to walk. Upon reaching the first row of shopping carts, he pulled one free and pushed it in my direction. “Here you go. Have a cart.”
Weirdly enough, as we were walking
across the parking lot to reach the store’s entrance, I had said to Desiree,
“I’m not going to grab a cart. We’re only getting a couple of items.” With that
in mind, I said, “No, thanks,” to the man.
“Take it,” the man insisted. “It’s
easier shopping with a cart.”
I paused for a second and thought, How
can I refuse a random act of generosity? “Okay. I’ll take the cart. Thank
you.”
As we worked our way deeper into the
store, our “couple” of items multiplied into a half-dozen things at the bottom
of our cart. “You know,” I said to Desiree as we headed to purchase everything,
“that was a pretty smart guy we met on our way in. It is easier shopping with a
cart, and you can buy more.”
My Mayday tree, the autumn wind having stripped away most of its leaves, now stands stiff and without grace. The ground below the tree is purpled with fallen leaves. Another man might rake up the fallen leaves and bag them, but I like to watch as the wind breathes life back into them, urging them to skitter and swirl across my drive. I am reminded of what my friend Bill told me about snow in the winter when he was a young boy. He noticed that their house was the only one on the block without snow cleared from the sidewalks.
“Dad,” he asked his father, “how come
we don’t shovel our sidewalks like everyone else?”
His father readily answered, “The
Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”
—Mitchell Hegman
While sitting on the sofa, I glanced over toward the dining room and found myself confronted with an epic failure in my house-cleaning efforts.
Allow me to explain.
My typical method for cleaning the
house is something I refer to as “boy cleaning.” You might also refer to this
as “half-assed,” and you’d hit the mark. I call it boy cleaning because it’s
what you might get if you forced a boy between the ages of ten and eighteen
into a session of house cleaning. The kid is going to be a little sulky and
will hurry to finish. If sweeping the floor, rugs and tables will be swept
around, not swept under. Instead of picking up clutter, it will be stacked into
a somewhat more presentable pile. Dust atop tables and other surfaces may or
may not get sleeved off with the nearest shirt that has not yet migrated to the
laundry room.
You get the idea.
So, the last time I cleaned the
dining room, I boy cleaned. Posted below is a picture I captured with my
smartphone. If you look at the floor along the front of the hutch there, you’ll
see a sizeable patch of dust I missed in my hurried efforts. Also, if you visit
me at my house, please avoid looking under the tables.
I have been living with a serious error in my thinking for my entire life. Until just yesterday, I thought the harmonica was merely an inconsequential instrument, used simply to spice up a song now and then. I could not have been more wrong.
Yesterday, for the first time, I
heard Indiara Sfair playing a harmonica.
Indiara Sfair is a Brazilian
harmonica virtuoso known for her soulful playing, blending blues, jazz, and
Brazilian influences. She began playing the harmonica at a young age and gained
international attention through her online performances. Her expressive
phrasing and technical skill on the instrument are transformative. She gives
the harmonica the range of a piano, the depth of a saxophone, and bends notes
like a blues guitarist. After listening to the first of her songs, I quickly
found a half dozen more.
Take the time to watch the two-minute
video I’m sharing today. Maybe a harmonica will provide you, as it did for me,
with everything you ever wanted in a song.
Morning Report for October 17, 2024:
The candidates for various offices
are clamoring as the election approaches. Though such a thing is not possible,
it seems as though 11 out of every 10 television advertisements are negative
political offerings. Daily, my mailbox fills with political fliers, which I
promptly discard. The chipmunks, normally scampering about the back deck, have
made themselves scarce as they finalize setting up their burrows for
overwintering. In just the last week, the linden tree outside my bay windows
has blushed yellow, and more island-girl Christmas decorations have blossomed
within our house. Finally, in broader news, courts in Switzerland have ruled
that a dial manufacturer (in their much-vaunted watchmaking industry) was
justified in forcing workers to clock out and take bathroom breaks on their own
time.
End of morning report.
—Mitchell Hegman
In a time long before mechanical contrivances washed clothes and milled wheat, a young girl named Tamira was sent to wash clothes beneath the streamside cottonwood trees. Though her name meant “magic,” Tamira was also mischievous. She quickly grew bored with dipping clothes in the chill water and began wandering along the edge of the stream. Finding a puff of dandelion parasols, she fashioned them into small winged insects, broadcast them to the wind, and watched them fly away. Discovering small twigs and stones, she shaped them into hard-shell insects and shellfish, and by releasing them into the water, they became the crawlies you find today. Finally, Tamira plucked leaves from the cottonwood and folded them into the shape of fish. When she tossed the folded leaves into the eddies of the water, they transformed into trout.
Tamira was a naughty girl. For this
reason, some of the winged insects became biting things, some of the crawlies
pinch, and the trout became shy.
—Mitchell Hegman
When I first moved out here to the country thirty-some years ago, the coyotes living in the pine and juniper wilds around my home yowled nightly. They also had a strange habit: if a small plane flew low over the ranchlands at night, they would ignite into a crying fit just after the plane cleared the gulley, hill, or island of prairie where they happened to be. The howling frightened my wife, but I found myself fascinated by how the wild chorus swelled and ebbed all around us. However, as more houses began to appear in the landscape around me, the sound of the chorus began to fade. By the early 2000s, the nights fell into silence, and the coyotes were gone. This year, for whatever reason, the coyotes have returned to the swaths of darkness surrounding my house. I can’t say this is comforting, exactly, but a part of me appreciates the crying in the night.
—Mitchell Hegman
We followed a meandering road, ascending high into the mountains. By now, at all elevations, the forests have adopted their autumn colors. The road we chose soon delivered us to a place where lofty tamaracks had marched into the fir and pine stands of timber. Here and there along the way, cottonwood and aspen trees appeared in tight collections, presenting a bright yellow, sometimes leaning toward orange. Where the sun reached into the understory, it often highlighted brush in bright red hues.
Posted are four photographs captured
during our drive into the mountains.
—Mitchell Hegman
—"It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much."
—"If you don't know where you are going, you might
wind up someplace else."
—"You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm
not hungry enough to eat six."
What if there existed a requirement that each of us were required to hang a sign on our person that used a single descriptor to describe us? How would you describe yourself in a single concise phrase? I got to thinking about this and quickly realized that a lot of phrases would apply. Following are a few descriptors that apply to me:
—Mitchell Hegman
Last night, in our evening wear, Desiree and I walked out to stand on the deck as the sky slowly pulsed with rainbow colors. It was a soft display of northern lights—not dramatic, simply beautiful. Today, I am sharing an image of Desiree and me under the colorful sky.
—Mitchell Hegman
Weirdly enough, I don’t mind digging a hole in the ground. For one thing, the results of your work are immediate and obvious. Additionally, performing any manner of manual labor allows me to clear everything else from my mind—it’s a holiday for my brain.
Last winter, Helena and the broad
area surrounding it experienced a die-off of certain non-native decorative
juniper bushes. We lost a juniper that had been growing alongside the driveway
for thirty years.
After experiencing her first autumn
season some six months after arriving here, Desiree has become enamored with
bushes and trees that display red and orange when they turn. With this as our
guide, we agreed we needed to dig out the root ball and replace the juniper
with something that will exhibit red in the fall. On a recent visit to a local
nursery, we purchased an autumn splendor buckeye tree.
Yesterday, I excavated around the
juniper root ball, pried it from the ground, and dug a hole that would
accommodate the buckeye tree. A great order of work, that. And yet, I enjoyed
the time spent digging.
I am posting a photograph of the hole
I dug and the juniper root ball I removed to make way for planting the buckeye
tree. I placed a can of Cold Smoke Beer alongside the hole to provide a
reference for size.
—Mitchell Hegman
While poking around inside a store the other day, I spotted four elderly folks clustered together, chatting near the intersection of two aisles. I immediately surmised that they were friends—two couples who had chanced upon each other while shopping.
I thought to myself, Old people are kinda cute.
As I walked past them, I recognized
one of the individuals as someone several years younger than me. That nearly
convinced me I am getting old.
—Mitchell Hegman
Last night, a most beautiful display of light fell upon us from the north. From end to end of the starry expanse, the aurora borealis pulsed and shimmered above us—all the work of the sun showering charged particles upon the magnetic shield enveloping our planet.
When
you experience the northern lights, as we did last night, you quickly set aside
all thoughts of the science behind them and simply stand below in wonderment.
This is how the sky became my garden.
I am
sharing three photographs I captured at the peak of the light display.
—Mitchell
Hegman
