Black Lung

The Dead South—a four-piece band from Regina, Saskatchewan—blends bluegrass, folk, and rock to produce acoustic music with a little dirt under its nails and mischief in its grin. The banjo player outright rocks on some songs. When I listen to them, I’m compelled to snap my fingers or stomp my feet.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed The Dead South. Their breakout hit, "In Hell, I'll Be in Good Company," has racked up hundreds of millions of views, and the group has become something of a movement.

Posted here is a song titled "Black Lung."

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJhklT4ST9M

Close to the Nest

I have new neighbors. Actually, they’re more like tenants. I’m talking about two pairs of birds with active nests in my yard. I have a set of robins in a nest in the Mayday tree and a brace of bluebirds nesting in a box on a post not far away. I saw the bluebirds setting up house several weeks ago and had mentioned to Desiree that robins were hanging around pretty steadily. “They have a nest somewhere close,” I suggested.

I discovered the robins’ nest in the Mayday just yesterday.

Both couples are incredibly tolerant of my presence near their nests. I appreciate that. At the same time, I’ve given the bluebirds space and will now do the same for the robins as much as possible.

I’ve now witnessed both sets of birds bringing in food—bugs, more accurately—to the nest to feed their little ones. Robins and bluebirds tend to be exemplary, extremely attentive parents. I know how demanding this can be. As a boy, I raised a robin until it fledged. I found the small, nearly naked bird on the street with no nest in sight, carried it home cupped in my hands, and then spent the next few weeks tending it.

I’ll never forget the day I allowed the bird to go free. It was the first time I understood that sadness can wed joy and become a single thing.

Bluebird Box

Robin’s Nest

—Mitchell Hegman

My Present Composition

I’m 10 percent warm and squishy,

10 percent wondering where I left my phone,

5 percent feeling like I’ve still got it,

25 percent happily retired,

10 percent trying to remember that one person’s name,

5 percent out back, chopping firewood,

15 percent in need of a haircut,

5 percent keeping track of the nearest bathroom,

5 percent measuring life by the standard of a Cold Smoke beer,

and 10 percent watching the clouds roll by.

—Mitchell Hegman

Cold Smoke: Another View

Desiree and I had dinner last night at a bar and grill just a short walk from the Finlen Hotel. The establishment was housed in a wonderfully preserved old structure overlooking “the Flats” and the noteworthy Highland Mountains. As luck would have it, the bar featured Cold Smoke on tap.

In my world, you always order a freshly poured Cold Smoke when given the opportunity.

This wasn’t a moment for comparing sizes, measuring snowfall, or rating life’s strange events. This was a Cold Smoke meant simply to pair with a good meal and the most beautiful woman in the world.

Cheers to that.

A Fresh Cold Smoke

—Mitchell Hegman

The Finlen Hotel

Desiree and I are spending a couple of nights at the Finlen Hotel in Uptown Butte, America. I’m here for two days of teaching. Uptown Butte is, in my estimation, one of the best places in the world. The area is rich with history, and the locals are friendly. I also love seeing the snow-capped chevron peaks of the Highland Mountains across the way.

The Finlen, a product of the 1920s, is lovely on the inside. Our room is in the adjacent motel, which is well-maintained and pleasantly clean.

At the height of the mining boom last century, Butte thrummed with life, its streets alive with the clatter of streetcars and the steady churn of industry. Smoke curled into the sky from smelters and stacks, casting a haze over a city swollen with immigrants who had come from every corner of the globe to dig copper from the earth. Saloons spilled light and laughter into the night, boarding houses overflowed, and the town pulsed with the fierce, gritty optimism of a place where fortunes were being wrestled from the rocks beneath their feet.

We strolled around the block, admiring some of the old buildings shortly after arriving, and even spent a few minutes browsing an antique shop that was stacked from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with glassware, clothing, toys, and anything else you might imagine.

Here, even the passing cars are friendly. On our stroll back to the Finlen, a carload of teenagers waved and said hello from a passing car.

Put all of this together, and you get Montana at its very best.

Finlen Hotel  

Desiree in the Lobby

Desiree With a Highland Mountain Backdrop

Browsing Antiques

—Mitchell Hegman

On the Other Side

In my early twenties, I went through a stage where I read nothing and wrote nothing but contemporary poetry. This condition is more widely known as depression. I managed to work through this episode without becoming a tortured poet myself. Having no talent for writing poetry turned out to be my blessing.

Sylvia Plath, someone with absolute talent, once wrote: "I talk to God but the sky is empty. And when I look for the arrow that struck me, I can’t find it. But I can find the wound."

Long ago, my wound healed.

—Mitchell Hegman

Cabin Junk Drawer

Some twenty years ago, I bought a rolling kitchen island to use in the cabin—just until we got around to installing proper cabinets. Tomorrow, we’re finally ordering those cabinets and cupboards. Here’s the interesting thing: even that temporary rolling island proved enough to establish a junk drawer.

Early this morning, after coaxing a fire to life in the woodstove, I took stock of the cabin’s junk drawer. Here’s what I found:

• One big box of wooden matches
• Two small boxes of wooden matches
• Two partially used matchbooks
• One 60-watt incandescent lightbulb
• Six long lighters for starting the woodstove
• Three type C batteries
• Five packets of green tea
• One key ring with no keys
• One miniature screwdriver

It’s an interesting little collection. The lighters and matches are essential. The batteries and incandescent bulb, once useful, have mostly slow-marched into obsolescence. The tea doesn’t really belong, and yet somehow, everything else does.

I’ve posted a photo of the island, along with one of the miniature screwdriver posed beside a Cold Smoke beer—so you can properly judge its size.

Kitchen Island

Screwdriver 

—Mitchell Hegman

Grand Prismatic Spring

Desiree and I drove home by way of a loop through Yellowstone National Park after my teaching engagement there.

A great choice, that. We managed, among other things, to walk the boardwalk that loops through the steaming features at Grand Prismatic Spring.

Grand Prismatic Spring looks like something spilled from another world—with bold hues painted in unnatural patterns and steam sweeping back and forth above the water. That water, impossibly clear and hot enough to boil an egg, pulses with color: deep blue at the center, then rings of green, yellow, orange, and rust—each band the result of heat-loving bacteria doing what they’ve done for millennia. It’s the largest hot spring in the United States, but it’s the colors that are most impressive.

I’m posting photographs taken along the boardwalk at Grand Prismatic Spring.

Grand Prismatic

Patterns on the Flats

A Smaller Hot Pot along the Walk

Desiree on the Boardwalk

—Mitchell Hegman

A Toilet Paper Array

Toilet paper is serious business. More to the point, running out can have serious consequences. One of the bathrooms at the facility where I conducted classes in Yellowstone National Park features something designed to alleviate that risk: a toilet paper array.

Not a dispenser.

A full-on array.

This is all about never turning aside and getting the job done. This is the Great Wall, not a fence. This is an entire industry mobilized. This is bold and unwavering. An arsenal.

A Toilet Paper Array 

—Mitchell Hegman

Emigrant Peak

Emigrant Peak is a striking mountain located in Montana’s Paradise Valley, just east of the town of Emigrant and north of Yellowstone National Park. Part of the Absaroka Range, the peak surges abruptly to an elevation of 10,926 feet. Its summit towers more than 6,000 feet above the Yellowstone River, which winds through the valley floor below.

Yesterday, on a drive through Paradise Valley on the way to a teaching engagement with the Yellowstone Park electricians, Desiree and I stopped to admire Emigrant Peak from a fishing access along the Yellowstone River.

Emigrant Peak

Desiree Along the River 

—Mitchell Hegman

Butterfly Central

 My chokecherry bushes are just now entertaining full bloom. All manner of bees, flies, wasps, butterflies, and no-name whizbots have swarmed the shroud of fragrant flowers. One butterfly—the Juniper Hairstreak—is especially drawn to the flowers.

The Juniper Hairstreak is a small, brilliantly colored butterfly found in scattered populations across Montana, primarily in the drier, open habitats of the state's valleys and foothills. Montana marks the northern edge of its range, and sightings are typically limited to areas where Rocky Mountain juniper is well established. The larvae are host-specific, feeding exclusively on juniper foliage, while adults are often seen nectaring on a variety of spring wildflowers. With a wingspan of just about 1 inch, they are comparable in size to a Cheerio or a shirt button, and their quick, darting flight makes them easy to miss.

The underside of the hindwings is striking, featuring an iridescent green. Adults are most active from late spring into early summer, typically in one generation per year in Montana's climate. My chokecherry bushes are serving as butterfly central for the local population of Hairstreaks. Standing before one of the bushes, you are likely to see a dozen or more of these animated paint chips at once. I have posted two photographs I managed.

A Collection of Juniper Hairstreak Butterflies

Hairstreak Details 

—Mitchell Hegman

Connecting the Dots

It’s true that the top of my head is getting pretty bald, but I’m still capable of proving I’m not a robot when my online interactions require it. So, I’ve got that much going for me.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Weirdly Sobering Thought

I’m not opposed to going along with a bad idea, so long as the food is decent and I’ve got either a wee dram of single-malt Scotch or a sip of Cold Smoke beer in hand.

—Mitchell Hegman

Small Beauties

I don’t always have a Cold Smoke beer when I really need one. It’s a bummer, but I manage to carry on. Yesterday turned out to be one of those days when chance caught me beerless—just when I really needed one for use as my standard scale for size.

On a quick turnaround trip to the cabin, I chanced onto a patch of mixed flowers, including shootingstar and fairy slippers (one of our rare orchids). These two specimens are among the smallest of the mountain wildflowers. At the same time, they are among the most striking to behold. Shootingstar flowers blaze with color, and fairy slippers dazzle with delicate particulars. Both of these natives keep a low profile in growth, and the flowers are something near the size of a dime.

I apologize for not having a can of Cold Smoke to place alongside the flowers so you might get an accurate read on size.

Fairy Slippers

Shootingstar

—Mitchell Hegman

False Snow

Our Mayday tree is nearing the end of a prolific bloom. As a kind of grand finale, the flowers shed their white petals all at once. A slight breeze may release thousands of them, sending them swirling down to settle on the concrete apron below. Before long, the fallen petals look like skiffs of false snow swept into place.

Mayday trees, native to northern Europe and northern Asia, are the first of my flowering trees or shrubs to bloom in spring. Interestingly, just as the Mayday begins to brush off its blossoms, the nearby chokecherry—first cousin to the Mayday, but native to Montana—is only now beginning to unfurl its fragrant flowers.

—Mitchell Hegman

List of Ideas for Leading a More Interesting Life

Following is a list of ideas you might put into practice if you wish to lead a more interesting life:

• Practice whistling on a regular basis.
• Use body paint to draw smiles on your bruises.
• Challenge yourself by squeezing the word “fandango” into at least one conversation every day.
• Give yourself a single name—something along the lines of “Sting” or “Prince”—but choose the name from the Periodic Table of Elements. Maybe “Boron” or “Radon.”
• Volunteer for clinical tests involving substances with psychedelic properties.
• Accurately balance your checking account.
• Whack weeds while naked.
• Read a classic Russian novel while juggling.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Swing

The Hegman lakefront has been without a swing set—or even a single swing—for more than 60 years. Obviously, this is a problem. After all, my neighbors, the St. Clairs, have a swing dangling from one of their golden willows. Thankfully, Desiree both recognized and remedied the situation during a break in the last several days of rain.

Posted is a photograph of the newly installed (and tested) Hegman swing.

The Hegman Swing

—Mitchell Hegman

Dust Cattle

Our cabin sits just shy of 10 miles from the edge of Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex—the second-largest wilderness area in the contiguous U.S. and home to a robust population of grizzly bears.

We’re talking wild country here.

But the area around our cabin is wild in a more impractical way. Not grizzly bear wild—we’re talking dust cattle.

Dust cattle are like dust bunnies on steroids. With the rugged and untamed surroundings—the campfires, the thick forest, the creek flouncing through, and the mud from recent rains—it’s easy to track all kinds of whatnot into the cabin. After a weekend of work in and around the place, Desiree swept the floor before we packed up and wound our way down the mountain roads to our wide valley home. The result of her efforts: a healthy collection of dust cattle.

I’m sharing a photo of the dust cattle beside a Cold Smoke beer, for scale and accuracy.

Dust Cattle and a Cold Smoke Beer 

—Mitchell Hegman

An Important Part?

I’ve been using a variety of tools while installing laminate flooring and some associated wood trim in the loft of our cabin. While working on the project over the weekend, I found a rubber ring on the loft stairway. It looked like something that might have been shed from one of my tools—maybe from a pneumatic air gun or the compressor.

Frankly, the sight of the rubber ring freaked me out. I quickly scooped it up and wandered around my immediate worksite, examining various tools to see if any of them might have shed parts.

My tools proved intact. So, what sort of thing might have lost such a ring?

Then, entirely by chance, as I sipped coffee in our cabin’s unfinished equivalent of a kitchen, my eyes fell upon the butane lighter I’d used to start a fire in the woodstove earlier that morning.

Bingo!

The ring turned out to be a completely unnecessary design flourish that had popped off the lighter. Mystery solved—and no tools were harmed in the process.

The Rubber Ring

The Lighter

—Mitchell Hegman 

Not a Butterfly

Between inconsistent lighting, the false motion of trees, and illusive critters, determining what triggered a game camera isn’t always straightforward. A week ago, I strapped my game camera to a tree a bit less than a stone’s throw from my cabin. The area is something of a natural passage near the creek. In the past, this placement has yielded photographs of countless deer, several moose, foxes, and even a mountain lion.

When I cleared the camera this week, I found the requisite shots of nothing, some deer, and what appears to be a bear sniffing at the lens.

I’m pretty sure it’s not a butterfly.

Photo #1

Photo #2

—Mitchell Hegman

In Remembrance

The Mayday tree blossomed early in 2011.

I know this because I wheeled my wife out in her wheelchair to sit beneath the sweet, otherworldly shroud of white flowers. The bees had also come early to the tree. The entire expanse around the tree vibrated with the hum of thousands of tiny wings.

Sitting in her chair, looking up into the tree, Uyen smiled a much bigger smile than I imagined possible. She had, by this time, lost her ability to walk or control most bodily functions. Cancer had ravaged her wholesale. And yet, she remained beautiful. And she, too, became part of that soft, living hum beneath the Mayday tree.

Only a few days later, on this very day of the year, Uyen faded away entirely. The flowers on the Mayday—ephemeral as they were—outlasted her.

Sometimes I wonder: if I had held her tighter, if I had pleaded more, might she have endured longer than the flowers on the Mayday tree?

Sometimes, the hurt comes back to me as big and whole as it was that last day in May.

Today, we remember the grace and beauty of Uyen Hegman.

The Mayday Tree Today

Uyen in 1985

—Mitchell Hegman

A Gruesome Bug

Monochamus is a genus of longhorn beetles known more grimly as sawyers—a name earned by the fierce work of their larvae. Found worldwide, these beetles target the wounded: fire-scorched, diseased, or storm-battered conifers like pine, Douglas fir, spruce, and true firs. The adult beetles carve slits into the bark of these dying giants to deposit their eggs. From each slit hatches a pale, legless grub—blind and insatiable—that begins to bore deep into the heartwood. With no eyes to guide them, the larvae chew blindly through the tree’s flesh, spiraling inward in a slow, relentless assault. As they tunnel, they pass through multiple growth stages, or instars, before sealing themselves into pupal chambers to complete their transformation. When feeding, these grubs make a clicking or rasping noise that can be heard several feet away.

While splitting some rounds of fir into cordwood, I encountered several sawyer grubs. In the natural environment, they help break down trees and return nutrients to the soil. Fortunately, they do not infest dry, seasoned lumber or cured wood. They’re only active in green or recently felled or dying trees. I’m sharing photographs—including one of a grub posed alongside a Cold Smoke beer—so you have a reference for size.

Pine Beetle Grub

The Grub Next to a Cold Smoke Beer

Adult Longhorn Beetle (Wikipedia)

—Mitchell Hegman

Thought Process

ME: “Jeez, I think I should clean the toilet.”

OTHER ME: “Say you were writing a traditional poem—what’s a good word that rhymes with toilet?”

ME: “Focus here. The toilet has a ring.”

OTHER, OTHER ME: “Toilet is a loser word, and why would you want to rhyme anything with anything? Not only that, poets are suicidal by nature.”

OTHER ME: “Goodnight, my kitten… That’s what Ernest Hemingway said to his wife just before he shot himself.”

OTHER, OTHER ME: “Theoretically, you could clean a toilet with a gun.”

ME: “Maybe we should do something else?”

OTHER ME: “What were we doing, anyway?”

ME: “Something having to do with knitting, I think.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Sap Removal 101

Only an idiot would wear one of his better shirts while splitting firewood.

I suspect you know where I’m going with this.

We’ve already established I don’t clean behind my ears, can’t spell anything longer than “dog,” and am a certified idiot.

So, one of the chunks of wood I chopped—while wearing one of my better shirts—smeared a swath of sticky pitch on it when I attempted to stack it. Surprisingly, an internet query immediately landed me on an agent for the removal of tree sap: rubbing alcohol.

I’m here to announce—rubbing alcohol works flawlessly (entire sentence spellchecked).

Thank you, great interweb!

Cordwood Stack

—Mitchell Hegman

Window Dressing

Window dressing is the act of thoughtfully improving the appearance of something to make it more appealing or presentable—especially when first impressions matter. In a clothing store, for example, you want to display your best apparel in the window. For my buddies from my hometown of East Helena, Montana, hanging an electrified beer sign in the window would qualify.

If you're a Filipina, placing plants in the window is the requisite form of window dressing. I’ve posted two photographs from my house to illustrate this method.

Laundry Room

Front Entry

—Mitchell Hegman

The Long Term

Why purchase a bundle of fresh asparagus for a few dollars when you could instead gather seeds and spend several years nurturing and developing your own patch—yielding, at best, the occasional spear? Without much deliberation, Desiree and I naturally gravitated toward the latter undertaking.

In early fall of 2022, Desiree and I discovered a patch of tall asparagus growing along the Musselshell River. By then, the plants had taken on hues of orange and yellow and produced an abundance of tiny seeds.

“We could grow these,” Desiree said, sprinkling a dozen seeds into her palm.

“Yes, we could,” I replied.

We collected several dozen seeds and, a few weeks later, planted them in a patch of earth we had prepared near the house. According to our internet research, it would take three growing seasons before we could begin harvesting spears. We are now entering the third season. During the first two, the patch produced only slender shoots that quickly transitioned into the fern stage. This year, however, a number of sturdier spears have begun to emerge.

I’ve included a photograph of one of the most impressive spears, placed beside a can of Cold Smoke beer (my preferred scale for size reference).

Perhaps we’ll harvest in the fourth season.

Cheers.

An Asparagus Spear

—Mitchell Hegman

The Living Dead: Mountain Style

Over the weekend, some friends drove up to the cabin and helped with dropping another tall fir tree and chunking it up into rounds for firewood. The tree was equivalent to the living dead. Though somewhat alive at the very top, at the base the tree was mostly dead and rotten—to the point I feared wind would topple it sooner rather than later.

We fully processed the tree after dropping it—first, whacking branches into manageable lengths and either stacking them into piles or directly submitting them to a bonfire. We then sawed the trunk into rounds and stacked them to dry through summer’s months of hard-pressing sun.

Once we had the tree fully processed, we stuffed foil-wrapped potatoes and kielbasa into the coals of the fire and sipped cold beers until the coals cooked our early afternoon feast to perfection.

The tree is already providing.

Thank you, friends!

Evaluating the Tree Before Dropping It

Tree Down

Desiree at Work

—Mitchell Hegman

E. Grand

My name is Erythronium grandiflorum, but I sing my bright yellow under the more common name of glacier lily. Perhaps you know my first cousin Yellowbell or my wayward and more distant cousin Beargrass. I am first to emerge from the snow castle and first to collect sunlight cast across the forest floor.

Mine is a simple and serene life, but I stand before you with the perfect, sturdy grace granted the first color-bearer within the distant woods.

Please, call me Lily—if grandeur overwhelms.

A Glacier Lily Near the Cabin

—Mitchell Hegman

Adopted

I’ve been adopted by a pair of robins. They first appeared in what I loosely describe as my yard about two weeks ago. They are not opposed to bouncing in nearby me as I wander about. They especially enjoy working the yard with me as I sprinkle around the trees. I’ve taken to looking for them each morning and find myself disappointed if I fail to see them immediately.

I call both of them Robby.

This may explain why one or the other of them sometimes scolds me from where they perch in the Mayday tree. Good neighbors are like that—they’re not afraid to give you the “what for.”

An American Robin (Wikipedia)

—Mitchell Hegman

Three Years in Montana

As of May 1st, Desiree has been here in Montana for three years. In that time, she’s experienced temperatures as low as -40°F, unearthed dinosaur bones, spooked a grizzly bear out of a huckleberry patch, and become the only person I know to catch a brook trout on her very first creek-fishing cast.

Adapting to Montana’s intemperate weather is no small feat, but Desiree has done so with ease—if not grace. In celebration of her three-year Montana milestone, I’m sharing a quintessential Montana moment: a photograph of Desiree posing with a snowman she made early this spring.

Yep. She’s wearing shorts.

Desiree in the Snow

—Mitchell Hegman

Splitting Big Rounds

I’ve been forced to up my game, using Cold Smoke beer for size comparisons. A single can of beer doesn’t tell the tale properly when it comes to revealing the size of the rounds of firewood in the back of my truck. So instead (as witnessed by the first two photographs below), I used an eight-pack for reference.

The rounds of wood came from a dead fir we dropped onto the road near my cabin last weekend. We experienced highly unsettled weather while felling and chunking the tree into sections. One minute, we would be in the midst of an outright blizzard; the next, blue skies would shoulder away the storm and permit sunshine to brighten the valley notch. These Montana-style meteorological alternations went on for the entire afternoon.

I hauled a load of rounds home and am now in the process of splitting them by hand—which may qualify as work, but I enjoy it absolutely.

Splitting Rounds

Rounds and Beer in My Truck

Sunshine (One Minute)

Snow (The Next)  

—Mitchell Hegman