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