My Pet Peeve

I have a particular pet peeve that likely would not register with most people. That said, I have adopted this thing wholesale. And here it is: I cannot tolerate seeing manufacturer’s stickers on plastic storage bins once they have been purchased and put to use. To me, leaving the sticker on is equivalent to moving your mobile home to a permanent location and leaving the wheels under it without skirting to cover them.

It's surprising how off-putting the sight of the manufacturer’s sticker is to me. If I spot one while a guest at someone’s house, I must tamp down a strong urge to slip away and tear it off.

By the way, there is also such a thing as fear of stickers. The term for this is pittakionophobia, which refers to an intense fear of stickers, adhesive labels, or sticky materials. People with this phobia may feel discomfort, anxiety, or even panic when encountering stickers—whether it's the texture, the adhesive residue, or the act of peeling them off.

Me? I’m all about peeling stickers off storage bins. In fact, I purchased two bins yesterday. Today, I’m sharing a photograph of a sticker I captured just before I peeled it off.

A Sticker Just Before Removal

—Mitchell Hegman

Recent Lessons I’ve Learned

• It’s possible for a piece of kindling you just split with an axe to fling directly up into your face.
• No matter your age, your right foot doesn’t fit in the left shoe.
• The smaller the piece you cut with a miter saw, the more likely it is to get snagged by the blade and chunked across the garage.
• Following my first taste test in thirty or so years, I’ve decided I can live without eating Shiitake mushrooms.
• Reading instructions before assembling something may actually provide a few advantages.
• A cup of coffee will always be a little too hot or a little too cold—never just right.
• If you drop a screw, it will roll to the least accessible spot in the room.

—Mitchell Hegman

What’s for Dinner?

Desiree is a remarkable cook. She not only invents and prepares otherworldly delicious food—she also creates attractive presentations. I’m convinced she could, if given the latitude, make a tasty dish from a throw rug.

The other day, I stepped into the kitchen and found something not far removed from that. It looked as though Desiree was cooking a towel in one of our pots.

“Are we having towel for dinner?” I asked when Desiree appeared a minute or so later.

“I’m steaming something,” she answered.

“Yes, a towel.”

I didn’t press for more details. Cooking is her thing, and I have learned to trust her judgment. We didn’t have a towel for dinner that night, but if, at some point, a slice of towel appears on my dinner plate, I’ll give it an honest try.

Cooking a Towel

—Mitchell Hegman

Early Morning Advice

As I have mentioned in a previous blog or two, giving unsolicited advice is not a practice I often undertake. Today, however, I feel the need to do so as a public service.

This is pretty straightforward advice: Don’t attempt to change the battery in your car’s key fob at 5:00 in the morning. I did just that yesterday morning, with rather alarming results—literally.

My fob, like many, snaps together. This sounds pretty simple but is, in practice, something akin to trying to open a child-proof pill bottle while wearing mittens. First off, you need to pry apart the outer shell and then pry apart the electronics board inside to access and replace a pair of batteries. Once that is accomplished, the pieces must be snapped together again—the equivalent of assembling furniture with one hand.

After finally managing to get the fob mostly snapped together, I grabbed a pair of channel-lock pliers and leveraged them to clamp down on the edge of the fob.

Big mistake.

The fob did snap together but also initiated the honk alarm on my car in the garage. When I tried to press the button to stop the horn, the fob was totally unresponsive, and the horn continued to blare at regular intervals. In a panic, I swept into my den to retrieve the spare fob, which had to be fished from inside a glass vase that holds a multitude of keys and fobs. Eventually, I found the fob and stopped the racket.

Did I mention Desiree was sleeping at the time? Well, after two minutes of horn honking, I had cured that.

Fobs

—Mitchell Hegman

Winter Tulips

Richard Brautigan said it best in his simple phrasing: “The tulips are too excitable; it is winter here.”

Not long ago, Desiree brought home two sets of tulips. Her intent was to plant them outside for early spring color. Now, they are spent on a bottom shelf in our sunroom, with only a six-inch wall separating them from a persistent snowbank snuggling against my house.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Hole in the Earth

In the almost-spring weather, Desiree and I walked our road, seemingly stirred without forethought, through the swell of hills near our house. With sunlight threading through the widely scattered bull pine and unruly collections of juniper, the snow had receded to shadowed lees and earthen cuttles.

The sun somewhat oversells itself in Montana this time of year, and with warming faces, Desiree and I found ourselves chatting about planting an apple tree. “Don’t forget,” I reminded Desiree, “we live on a literal pile of rocks. We will need to dig a big hole first.”

Desiree merely smiled in response.

I mark spring by the sight of my first returned bluebird. This typically occurs somewhere in the middle of March. This year, sometime after seeing my first bluebird, I shall dig a hole in the earth.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Actor

By day he fancies himself a rooster strutting in the henyard. He’s always dressed in flares, upright, and crowing his proclamations. But at night he’s bumping into walls and peeing on his own foot in the darkness, just like any other man.

—Mitchell Hegman

Proof That Anything is Possible

I’m of the mind that the mere fact someone figured out a way to make people pay to watch others golf is solid proof that anything is possible.

—Mitchell Hegman

Project Complete

In December 2022, Desiree began stripping wallpaper from the three master bathroom walls that featured it. This marked the beginning of sporadic efforts to completely remodel the bathroom.

After Desiree had been working on the wallpaper for a couple of hours, I checked on her progress. I found her picking at the paper on the wall, with a pile of shredded pieces at her feet.

“Well,” I asked, “how is it going?”

“I want to go back to the Philippines,” she answered.

Fortunately, Desiree pushed through and finished stripping the wallpaper. Over the next two years, we painted the walls, installed various wood trim features, replaced the flooring, and installed a new toilet. Yesterday, the new vanity was set in place—completing the project, except for two baseboard trim boards I must install today.

Both Desiree and I are happy to be done and pleased with the end results. I am sharing a few images of the work.

Desiree Stripping Wallpaper

The Original Vanity

New Vanity Set in Place

New Vanity Set in Place

—Mitchell Hegman

Fame Can be Mysterious

Once again, I thought about a conversation I had with a laborer on a construction site many years ago. The laborer, a tall and lanky sort, was an amateur musician. He explained that he had tried to make a living playing guitar in several small-time bands, but he never got enough traction to make a solid go of it. “One of my buddies was pretty good, though,” he expounded. “He ended up in a famous country band. You would know them.”

“Oh, what band?” I asked.

The laborer stalled for just a moment. “I don’t remember the band’s name.”

I must admit, this conversation has always bothered me.

—Mitchell Hegman

Birth Announcement

At 1:35 a.m. this morning, the calf on my left leg gave birth to a severe leg cramp—an excruciating bundle of agony that launched me straight out of bed. I would like to report that I’m doing fine now.

—Mitchell Hegman

Preserved by Tragedy

Tragedy, by nature, destroys, but it may also preserve.

Consider the La Brea Tar Pits, where countless Ice Age creatures met their end. From the late Pleistocene epoch, roughly 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and even tiny insects found themselves trapped in the sticky asphalt seeps. What was once their doom became their legacy—bodies entombed in tar, their bones waiting millennia to tell their story.

There are places in Montana where we find the fossils of dinosaurs that were swept into rivers and buried in mud, only to be preserved for millions of years.

Or look to Pompeii, where an ordinary day in 79 CE ended in disaster. Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the city and its people in volcanic ash. In the suffocating heat and falling debris, time stood still. Their final moments, frozen in hardened ash, now offer a glimpse into a life abruptly halted but perfectly preserved.

Though lives were taken in tragedy, the victims were held in place—kept for the light of a new day.

Body Casts at Pompei

—Mitchell Hegman

Bumped

Desiree and I got bumped. Not bumped by another car. Not bumped out of position in a tournament. Not bumped from a flight at the airport. Not bumped into by a stranger in a crowded hallway.

We got bumped into an upgrade in rooms.

We were scheduled to stay in one of the original rooms at the historic Sacajawea Hotel in Three Forks, Montana. Upon checking in, we were told they needed to bump us out of our room in the hotel but would upgrade us to a cottage next door.

Some years ago, I spent a night in the Sacajawea. Both the hotel and the room were lovely, though sound from all corners of the world seemed to transmit into the room throughout the night.

While I was dubious at first, both Desiree and I found ourselves thrilled upon checking into Cottage #1. The cottages are more like miniature colonial mansions than anything else. This was equivalent to getting bumped into first class on a long flight.

I am sharing three photographs featuring the cottages.

The Sacajawea Cottages

Desiree at Cottage #1

Inside Cottage #1

—Mitchell Hegman

The Thoughts Within

The old man spoke, almost whispering, to the young woman working at the liquor store: “Can you direct me to where I might find a bottle of Grand Marnier? I haven’t had any for many years, and I’m due a sip.”

That’s not what the old man actually wanted to say. He wanted to share that his little dog of nearly twenty had slowly faded and perished. He wanted to tell the young woman that the scent of roses made him nauseous, that too often he found himself standing somewhere in his house, unable to recall why he was there. He wanted to insist that he no longer prayed for rain. But he had long since learned that some truths were best left unspoken, left to wander in the quiet corridors of his mind.

—Mitchell Hegman

Phone Numbers

With the proliferation of cellphones, phone numbers have become a bit more elusive. Phone books are on the verge of becoming relics of the past. Memorizing phone numbers is similarly a fading practice. Of course, there are notable prefixes, such as the “800” toll-free numbers. Also, the “555” prefix, which has long been a staple of fictional phone numbers in movies, television, and literature. Unlike standard area codes assigned to geographic regions, 555 was originally designated as a service prefix, with numbers like 555-1212 reserved for directory assistance and the numbers 555-0100 through 555-0199 set aside exclusively for fictional use.

On the more notorious side, we have the song 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone, a massive hit in 1981. The song repeatedly calls out 867-5309 as the number to call for "a good time." Countless individuals and businesses across the U.S. with that number were bombarded with prank calls following the song’s rapid ascension.

Some people changed their numbers to escape the harassment, while others tried to capitalize on the song’s popularity. A few businesses, such as plumbing and HVAC companies, purposely acquired the number for easy brand recognition. Even today, 867-5309 is a sought-after number, with some businesses and individuals willing to pay large sums to claim it.

Me? I recall my own number, and that’s about the extent of it.

PHOTO: Etsy

—Mitchell Hegman

The First Light of Morning, February 21, 2025

Somewhere along my journey to the present, it became essential for me to wake early enough to witness the first light of day. I need to see the faint knees and shoulders of light nudging away the night on the eastern horizon. I am drawn to watch as shadows dissolve, revealing the familiar contours of mountains and pine trees.

More important still is the first embrace of direct light—the first blue sky pressing against the grays of the fading night, spokes of sunlight seeming to break through the mountains and stretch across the snowy prairie where I have built my house, my life.

In this emerging light, I am as new as the first brushstrokes of pure white upon the ground at the front of my house and the first green grasped by trees at the back. And now… let full color—and my own thoughtful reflections—begin.

—Mitchell Hegman

About Me

I asked AI (specifically ChatGPT) to find information about me. Winnowing through all that is public and the entirety of my footprints on social media—including something near 4,000 blog posts—AI summed up my presence in the following paragraph:

"In addition to his professional work, Mitchell maintains a personal blog titled The Sky Is My Garden, where he shares photography and personal reflections. In a 2018 post, he described himself as a 'big baby' regarding spiders, recounting an encounter with a large spider near his cabin. In a 2011 entry, he shared a photograph of the Helena Valley Holding Reservoir and the Big Belt Mountains, noting that he drove to the water's edge in full darkness and waited until sunrise to capture the moment."

I’m not sure that’s exactly how I would choose to distill all that is out there about me, but I cannot dispute anything. In fact, just for fun, I located a low-resolution copy of the photograph mentioned and have reposted it here today.

The Holding Reservoir, June 30, 2011

—Mitchell Hegman

It’s Never Too Late to Learn

It’s never too late to learn:

…that molasses contains vitamins and minerals that are good for you.

…how to send a text to the right person.

…when to admit your spouse is correct.

…how to correctly pronounce “Worcestershire.”

…where to hide potato chips so nobody else can eat them.

…why balancing your bank account matters.

…what happens when you try to spin donuts with an all-wheel-drive car in an icy parking lot.

…why cutting your own hair should be the second option.

—Mitchell Hegman

It’s About Energy Efficiency

As I drove past a field where several horses were eating from a pile of hay forked onto the snowy ground for their feeding, I naturally thought about electric heaters. An electric heater is considered 100% efficient at converting electrical energy into heat. That’s an impressive track record.

Horses, on the other hand, are an entirely different matter when it comes to energy use. My buddy put it this way: “I have a motor-sickle”—that’s what he called a motorcycle—“instead of a horse. The big problem with a horse is that you have to keep feeding it to keep it idling when you’re not using it.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Invested

Ah, my dear, the world outside has finally gone soft enough to accept us as we are. Snow has sifted down and made puffy mounds of the upended sage, the sentinel stones, the things that might have been soft before.

I appreciate how you nudged me and winked as I scratched through payments for our bills. In my head, I was thinking, “We need this, need this, don’t need that” as I considered expenses.

By the way, there is something important I forgot to tell you. The first time we kissed, and the most recent—I wish it had lasted longer.

—Mitchell Hegman

For Desiree

Wild Gestures

I have long claimed that my sister, Debbie, would be incapable of talking if you bound her hands. When she is talking, Debbie is constantly flinging her hands and arms about—often with the urgency of someone chopping wood or swatting down a horde of flies. I must admit, I sometimes find myself engaged in the same behavior.

Yesterday, I took this behavior to a new level. While trying to give someone directions over the phone, I found myself gesticulating wildly—pointing and sweeping my arms about. This was not a video call. I was gesturing as a matter of habit. Even once I realized I was gesturing toward someone who could not see me, I continued doing so.

Perhaps some conversations simply demand to be spoken with our whole bodies.

—Mitchell Hegman

I Never Liked St. Valentine

I’m sharing a song I originally posted on Valentine’s Day 2023. It’s a lighthearted take on the holiday in the form of a sweet song. As a personal tradition, I watch this video once every Valentine’s Day.

Though I’m a day late in sharing this—happy Valentine’s Day!

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvWoSGGd90w

Un-Bucket List

I decided to put together an “un-bucket” list—a list of things I have no desire to do. Here is a list of things I don’t want to do:

• Dive down to see the wreckage of the Titanic
• Wrestle a bear
• Eat green peppers
• Climb Mount Everest
• Sing the national anthem at the start of a baseball game
• Juggle running chainsaws
• Be a contestant on Naked and Afraid
• Jump the Snake River
• Ride a motorcycle in the globe of death
• Knit a sweater

—Mitchell Hegman

The Human Condition: Having the Same Thought

As I sat on my sofa in a swath of late afternoon sunlight, I considered the human condition. For all our differences, each of us, everywhere, resides in commonalities. As we simply put it in my hometown of East Helena, Montana: “We are more alike than we are different.”

Given this, I know that many others, in places both near and far, were having the same thought: “Should I get up and go to the bathroom now, or should I take a chance and hold it for just a bit longer?”

—Mitchell Hegman

The Outdoor Refrigerator

I shared a post just the other day about Desiree and her rookie winter mistake of trying to wash an outside window while the temperature remained in the single digits. Even given that, I must sing her praises for quickly adapting to winter in most aspects. She loves fresh snow and is enamored with our “bluebird” winter days. Perhaps most impressively, she has adopted the cold in practical ways. At the top of this list is using our back deck as what she calls her “outside refrigerator.”

Here in the haunches of our far-north winter, you will regularly find Desiree stepping outside with pots, pans, and occasionally plasticware filled with perishable foods for short-term storage in her outdoor refrigerator. Typically, such items are placed on a brick ledge at the base of the arches supporting the portico at our back door. On occasion, drinks and items that need to be cooled quickly will be stuffed into a snowbank.

Very practical, this stuff.

I am sharing a photograph of a pot of soup that has been stored in the outside refrigerator for a few days.

The Outdoor Refrigerator

—Mitchell Hegman

Monkey Business

Sri Lankan officials have attributed a nationwide power outage to an unfortunate encounter between a monkey and a grid transformer at the Panadura Power Station, located south of Colombo. Though no mention was made of the monkey’s condition following the incident, I’m guessing “toast” was the most likely outcome.

The fact that a single monkey can take out an entire country’s power grid is, frankly, ungood—as my buddy always termed such unfortunate events. This highlights one of the limitations of being a small island nation: you aren’t connected to a vast network of power grids. And though Sri Lanka is small—something like six times smaller than the state of Montana—it supports a much higher population density, with over 22 million people compared to Montana’s roughly 1.1 million.

That one monkey pulled the plug on all of them.

While Sri Lankan officials worked to resolve the immediate issue, senior engineers pointed to longstanding concerns about the country’s power infrastructure. Experts have repeatedly warned that the aging system is vulnerable to failures.

I hope we’re listening.

—Mitchell Hegman

PHOTO: Wikipedia

Window Washing

A learning curve is associated with wintering in Montana. There is the obvious stuff: learning to take a coat when you go someplace, no matter how warm it is when you leave; learning to always carrying an ice scraper in your car. As a kid, you figure out at some point or another that you shouldn’t stick your tongue on frozen metal.

Desiree, having been rather suddenly plunked into the middle of Montana as an adult, has been forced to learn our winter ways in a rather abridged manner—sometimes by trial and error. Yesterday, she learned another valuable lesson: you can’t wash the outside of the windows if the temperature is in the single digits.

Desiree managed to step outside with a wet rag without me noticing and forewarning her. Her laughter alerted me to her failed efforts. As you might imagine, the water froze into crystalline smears immediately as she wiped at the window.

We both laughed while appraising the window from the inside.

“We will have to wait until the temperature warms a bit to finish,” I suggested.

I have posted a photograph of the window.

Our Kitchen Window

—Mitchell Hegman

Bubba Balloo

I don’t recall the circumstances that brought me to the end of my dream early this morning, but the ending proved vivid. I stood amid a group of my friends in a dusky tavern, each of us holding a shot of whiskey in one hand.

“To Bubba Balloo, Fuller Brush salesman!” one of my buddies bellowed.

With that, we all extended our free hands high into the air, lifted one foot off the floor, and quickly downed our shots.

“Bubba Balloo!” someone cheered from behind me.

Just then, I awoke to my wholly quiet and darkened house. My snippet of a dream was entirely without context or depth, but I found myself wishing it had been real.

—Mitchell Hegman

Jasmine

Yesterday, I cleaned out a three-ring binder filled with outdated electrical training material I had put together for a grounding and bonding course. As I removed the papers, I fed them to a fire in my woodstove. One set of papers contained details from newspaper articles about a girl named Jasmine Flankey.

On July 4, 2009, Jasmine was electrocuted on the rooftop of a church in Missoula, Montana, while watching fireworks. She had touched a section of metal associated with an HVAC unit that had become electrically energized by an uncleared ground fault created by a lighting circuit within the church below.

Such energized metal is something we term as “above ground potential,” and 8-year-old Jasmine collapsed—never to rise again—the instant she touched it.

To this day, I use the story and circumstances of Jasmine Flankey’s death when I teach courses related to grounding and bonding. Something less than a dollar’s worth of materials used to electrically bond two sections of ductwork would have prevented this. When I tell this story, I also cite a half-dozen sections of Code that were put in place long ago to prevent circuits from developing such above ground potential.

Watching flames clutch and then consume the story of Jasmine as I pitched the papers into my woodstove forced something I can only describe as grief through me. But even with the papers gone, the name of Jasmine Flankey remains etched inside me.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Deep Winter Conversation

ME: (After stepping inside a friend’s house and stamping the snow off my boots at the door.) “Man, the weather forecast was way off today. It was supposed to warm up a little, but it’s super cold out there.”

FRIEND: “It’s not going to get better anytime soon.”

ME: “Do you have an outside thermometer? I want to see what the temperature is.”

FRIEND: “I have one, but it’s inside.” (Points toward the kitchen.)

ME: (After reflecting for a moment.) “Well, I guess that’s a pretty good idea. You don’t want your outdoor thermometer getting too cold.”

—Mitchell Hegman

On a Winter Day

Our Northern Rocky Mountain winters can steal your lunch money, force you to wear itchy underwear, and make your nose red. At the same time, winter can paint the entire sky and broad landscape with the most vivid shades of white and blue.

Yesterday, following a fresh snowfall, the unabashed sun filled everything with light. Though still frigid, the day proved stunning. I am sharing three photographs from a midday drive home.

—Mitchell Hegman

More Things I Would Like to See

Here is a list of things I would like to see:

• Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in a cage fight.
• Bigfoot chasing a UFO out of the woods.
• Chuck Norris knitting himself a winter accessory using barbed-wire yarn.
• The mechanics of electricity working at the atomic level.
• A deer eating marshmallows (I mean, who wouldn’t want to see that?).
• Benevolent potato chips slowly taking over control of the world.
• A gigantic, clear blue sapphire in our next bag of sapphire gravel.
• A cure for all forms of cancer.

—Mitchell Hegman

What’s in a Name: Paint Colors

Over the years, I’ve done my share of shopping for paint to apply to the walls of my house and cabin. The names some paint manufacturers assign to their colors have often impressed me on a scale that ranges from amusing to baffling. My small bathroom, for example, is colored “Navajo White,” a white that aspires, at some level, to become yellow. Somewhere along the line, I recall purchasing “Distant Thunder,” a shade we simply called gray when first learning the names of things.

Following are a few more paint colors for you to consider:

• Dead Salmon – A dusty pinkish-brown shade from Farrow & Ball, supposedly named after a historic painting technique rather than an expired fish.
• Elephant’s Breath – A warm gray with a hint of lilac, also from Farrow & Ball, with a name that sparks more curiosity than clarity.
• Arsenic – A strikingly bright green from Farrow & Ball, named after the poisonous compound historically used in pigments.
• Drunk Tank Pink – A vivid bubblegum pink, named for its supposed calming effect on aggressive individuals in holding cells.
• Smoky Monkey – A moody, charcoal-gray shade with a somewhat playful name.

Dead Salmon

—Mitchell Hegman

Mount Grinnell

Mount Grinnell is a massive, rocky peak in Glacier National Park, Montana, rising abruptly to 8,851 feet in the Many Glacier region. Named after explorer and conservationist George Bird Grinnell, the mountain is flanked by Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine. The Many Glacier area is frequented by grizzly bears and offers spectacular vistas of rough-hewn mountains, stair-stepping waterfalls, and an abundance of wildflowers.

Though it’s somewhat out of the way, I try to visit Many Glacier whenever I tour the park. Just last September, Desiree and I spent part of a day there. While there, we both took dozens of photographs. Late last week, we started piecing together a new jigsaw puzzle someone gifted us. The puzzle, as it turns out, is a photograph of Grinnell Peak.

“You know,” I told Desiree as we were staring at the puzzle in progress, “I have a picture of nearly the same view on my phone from our trip last fall.”

After a little scrolling, I found the image on my phone. Working on a puzzle with a subject adds another pleasurable dimension to the task.

After finding the image of the peak on my screen, I placed my phone on the table and had Desiree take a photograph of it. I am sharing that photograph here today.

Good stuff, this.

Mount Grinnell

—Mitchell Hegman

Phishing

Phishing is a type of cyberattack in which scammers attempt to trick individuals into providing sensitive information, such as login credentials, financial details, or personal data, by posing as legitimate entities. Yesterday, a phishing email somehow squeezed through my various layers of malware protection and landed in my inbox. The email thanked me for the purchase of “device protection” and then, in bold letters below, listed a phone number I could call if I wanted to cancel—the point at which someone would try to extract information from me.

The email featured several hallmarks of a scam. First, the sender's email address did not match the company name. Second, the grammar was wonky, as revealed in this sample: “Within a day, USD 375.99 will be taken out of your account. If you would want to cancel or request a refund, please contact our customer service staff right once.”

Honestly, it takes a lot for me to resist the urge to call the number and try to confuse or frustrate the scammers, but that would give them an opportunity to obtain my phone number.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Rock Collector

Apparently, the passenger-side rear tire on my car enjoys collecting rocks just as much as I do. It has collected two rocks in the last six months, requiring me to have the tire repaired each time.

Interestingly, my tire has wholly different criteria than I do for choosing which rocks it collects. The tire goes for sharply edged, rather plain-looking specimens. I, on the other hand, am drawn to more colorful rocks, especially those rounded and polished by the forces of nature. Just the same, I have added the specimens collected by my tire to my own rock collection.

I’m sharing a photograph featuring the two rocks picked up by my tire, along with a can of Cold Smoke beer as a reference for size. The specimen on the right is the most recent.

My Tire’s Rock Collection

—Mitchell Hegman

Bumper Stickers

My favorite bumper sticker of all time is this: “Mean People Suck.”

Just for fun, I asked AI to compile a list of other notable bumper stickers. Here are some of the best ones:

• "Not all who wander are lost… except me. I’m lost."
• "I’m not arguing. I’m just explaining why I’m right."
• "My driving scares me too."
• "Honk if you love peace and quiet."
• "If you can read this, I’m not impressed. Most people can read."

—Mitchell Hegman

Our First Crab Dinner

 ME: (As Desiree sat me down with a plate of crab legs) “Where’s the butter?”

DESIREE: “Butter?”

ME: “Yeah. Butter for dipping the crab legs.”

DESIREE: (offering a quizzical expression) ?

ME: “If you serve crab or lobster around these parts, you have to have butter. It’s the law. And if it isn’t the law, it should be.”

—Mitchell Hegman

In the Strange of a Winter Night

Living far out in the country, my trash disposal collection system is somewhat odd. Biweekly, a rumbling truck descends onto the prairie out in front of my house and extends a mechanical arm to pick up my bin and empty my trash into its massive collection box.

I happened to be awake at 4:10 a.m. this morning when the trash collection truck arrived, spangled in bright lights. For no particular reason, I decided at 4:14 a.m. to retrieve my bin and drag it back to my house.

Let me assure you, it’s a different world at 4:14 a.m. on a January morning in far north Montana. I stepped out into a vast and dark expanse. The temperature stood somewhere in the single digits. This is not a world we are naturally equipped to survive in. The hard-packed snow on my drive squeaked under my shoes as I left the shroud of light from my open garage door and headed toward my bin.

Out on the open prairie, in the strange of a winter night, while dragging my bin back home, I stopped in my tracks. Beautiful! I was surrounded by a dome of flexing stars. The white, snowy expanse appeared light blue—soft in color. Once I had stopped, the world became soundless. Just me and all those stars directing their valuable light at me.

—Mitchell Hegman

Roosters

I overheard Desiree talking with her father on FaceTime. As they spoke, I could hear, from her father’s end, one of the local roosters crowing in the background. No matter where you live in the Philippines, whether in Metro Manila or a faraway province, roosters are a ubiquitous feature of daily life.

In the early days of our relationship, when Desiree and I were communicating via Facebook and smartphones, I regularly heard her neighbors’ roosters crowing in the cityscape of Makati. While you might imagine having roosters crowing all around you as an annoyance, I rather quickly adapted to and even began to expect the sound in the background.

The nearest equivalent in my life growing up in East Helena, Montana, was the local smelter’s shift-change whistle, which regularly shrieked over the town. The smelter and the whistle are long gone now, but I find myself missing the shrill sound on some level.

—Mitchell Hegman

Before and After

I finally completed the most persnickety details of our bathroom remodel: applying a finish to the framed walls around the whirl tub. The only task remaining to complete the remodel is installing the vanity when it arrives in a couple of weeks.

It took me the better part of six days to cut, whitewash, and apply the irregular sections of wood around the whirl tub. The two 45-degree outside corners didn’t make the process any easier. I initially wanted to use stacked stone around the tub, but I needed ready access on one side in case the pump for the jets fails or acts up in some way. Desiree and I ultimately decided to use wood to create something resembling stacked stone. By using wood, I was able to construct a removable panel on one side, secured by just four screws, for easy access.

I’ve posted a series of three photographs from the project.

First Stage of the Tub Woodwork

The Finished Product

The Bathroom Before and After

—Mitchell Hegman

On Balance

On October 12, 1935, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck near East Helena, Montana, causing widespread damage and marking the beginning of an earthquake swarm.

Some seventy-plus years later, I entered a classroom in Knoxville, Tennessee, while attending training related to my role as an apprenticeship instructor. Upon entering the classroom, I noticed the image of a man balancing on his head atop a structure high above the ground on the computer screen of another attendee. It was only my second day of the class, and I didn’t really know the man, but the photograph intrigued me. I asked, “Where is that photograph from?”

“That was taken at a smelter in East Helena, Montana.”

“What? No kidding?” I couldn’t contain my shock. “That’s my hometown!”

We introduced ourselves. The gentleman with the photograph, it turned out, was a lineman instructor from Montana. His image brought us back to the earthquake swarms of 1935. The tremors had damaged the top section of one of the smokestacks at the plant. Not long after, brick masons repaired it, and metal rings were installed around the structure. In the image, one of the masons is performing a headstand on the edge of a platform constructed around the stack. If you look closely, you can see the Sleeping Giant far across the open valley in the background on the left.

That headstand, while making for an intriguing photograph, is a breathtakingly bad idea. It represents the completely unnecessary risks posed by horseplay at the job site. I now share this photograph in several of the safety classes I teach.

On Balance

—Mitchell Hegman

A Winter Soak Beneath a Roving Moon

My far north landscape has gone quiet beneath a fresh mantle of snow. The pine trees hold forth white tufts of snow in delicate balance. The air is sharp tonight, only a few degrees south of what I consider frigid. Above, the moon roves through tattered clouds. It peeks out at every opportunity, deliberate and unrelenting. Between the drifting veils, stars sparkle and flex.

The chill air stings my face as I make my way to the hot tub and whisk away the powder snow before tilting open the cover and allowing wisps of steam to thread together and envelop me. After slipping into the perfectly warm water, I sit back and allow every muscle to relax.

I can literally feel the silence around me. Not an empty silence, this. Here, beneath the wandering moon and the watchful stars, time relaxes its edges. The heat holds me steady, thawing the day’s small grievances, while the sky above slowly revolves around me.

Even deep in the winter, the sky is my garden. I am, at once, a part of the great motions there and apart from them. Tonight, the snow has softened the world, and the moon has perfectly choreographed its movements. I am the warmth at the edge of eternity.

—Mitchell Hegman

A White Hole

You are likely familiar with black holes in space. A black hole is a region in space where gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape. It forms when a massive star collapses under its own gravity, compressing its mass into an infinitely dense point called a singularity, surrounded by an event horizon—the boundary beyond which escape is impossible. Black holes influence their surroundings by warping spacetime.

While piecing together the night sky in a jigsaw puzzle that Desiree and I have been working on, I encountered a white hole. This white hole appeared because I have been unable to successfully fit pieces into one area, even though I managed to assemble the field all around it. The section where the white hole exists is made up of the same colors as everything around it. To me, there is no apparent reason why I can’t find the proper pieces and fit them in place. I don’t know why the hole formed. I can’t comprehend the science behind this one, but something is warping here, too.

I’m sharing a photograph of the white hole.

The White Hole

The Full Puzzle Image

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Jerry Seinfeld Said

 — “A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.”

— “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”

— “Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is on TV.”

Pin Nailer

Working with a pneumatic pin nailer is not for someone in a hurry. Pin nailers are notoriously finicky, requiring a lot of coaxing and ongoing maintenance. You will regularly be forced to stop and clear a jammed pin. Additionally, my pin nailer often fires blanks.

All of this is ultimately worthwhile, of course, because pins don’t leave large holes to be filled after you’ve nailed a piece of wood or other material in place.

Jams, when they occur, are obvious. Shooting blanks, however, is not. I have mistakenly pumped blanks shots into trim boards, only to have the boards slip out of place when I relinquish my hold on them. To ensure the nailer is functioning, I have developed a habit of nailing into a length of test wood every few shots. By the end of a day, my test shots create what looks like a pretty wicked weapon.

I am sharing a photograph of my length of test wood from work on some trim in the bathroom yesterday.

Pins in My Practice Wood

—Mitchell Hegman