Once More, the Pass

I slept fitfully last night.  Normal for me when I am away from home.  Something about the bed being a bit bouncy and the room temperature being too warm.  Warm enough to force me to kick the blankets away at times.

Each time I awoke during the night, I heard Rock Creek rushing along just outside our room.

Nice, that. 

Yesterday, we (four of us) drove from Helena to Red Lodge.  We are going to make one more attempt at driving over Beartooth Pass so we can enter Yellowstone Park from Cooke City.

Beartooth Pass is the highest highway in the Northern Rockies.  The road reaches nearly 11,000 feet in Wyoming and nearly 10,400 feet in Montana.  We last tried the pass in July, but were unable to access the climb due to a freak summer snowfall at elevation.  As luck would have it, the pass was also closed the day before yesterday due to another fresh snowfall.

Fortunately, plows opened the Beartooth again yesterday.

I should mention that the van we are piled into—Kevin’s—is making a great deal of brake noise.  A bit worrisome.   Fortunately, we are driving up the steep side of the pass and descending gradually into Yellowstone.

Today: Yellowstone or bust!

I have posted one photograph I captured yesterday from the window of the van when we stopped for highway construction exactly on the Sweetgrass County line.  Not a great photograph, but I thought the fence running out there for several miles was interesting.  Beyond that is the Crazy Mountains.  The other photograph was taken from a bridge over Rock Creek immediately behind our room here at the Rock Creek Resort.

--Mitchell Hegman

Saving Baby Jessica

Remember baby Jessica?  While playing with some other children, she dropped 22 feet into a well at her aunt’s house in Midland, Texas, and got stuck.  That was back in 1987.  Jessica was a mere 18 months old at the time.

I woke at 4-something this morning thinking about her.

Why?

I don’t know.

One second my mind is digging carrots in my neighbor’s garden.  The next second it is jamming a stick through the spokes of some kid’s bicycle wheel as he rides past.

So I got up this morning and poked around the web a bit looking for baby Jessica.  I even found a baby Jessica rescue webpage with a timeline and about a gazillion related links.

For those of you unfamiliar, the baby Jessica story is all about the dramatic rescue following her dropping into the well. For the next two-and-a-half days rescue crews, including mining experts, tunneled horizontally through rock to reach the little girl.  Throughout the rescue, Jessica could be heard crying, humming, and singing through a microphone that had been dropped down the well.

Hang on baby Jessica, we are coming to get you!

I spent a few minutes reading through some of the stories about her rescue.  It boiled into a worldwide news phenomenon.  How is it that dozens might die someplace and get little notice, but the baby Jessica story went big?

Actually, I know how.  It was my wife’s fault.  People like her, I mean.  She always held her heart out for children and animals.  She was transfixed by the story.

I even feel a little better for rescuing Jessica a second time this morning.

You’re welcome.

Posted is a recent picture of Jessica I found on the web.

--Mitchell Hegman

An Exercise

If you are tired of your life, try this exercise: imagine you are someone else for a day.  If you do this, and then find yourself in the kitchen wearing a wig and holding a large knife above your head, maybe this is not such a good exercise for you.  

--Mitchell Hegman

The Tapestry

I always thought he was headed toward a bad end—the half-naked man riding his rusty bicycle along the highways, collecting aluminum cans.  But he returns every summer.  I am left wondering if he has a wintertime condo on stilts in the turquoise waters of a Bora Bora lagoon.

It took me years, but I have learned not to make assumptions and not to judge.

The guy on the bike might collect cans because he enjoys doing so; exactly because it doesn’t mean a thing.  Me?  Maybe I have tried a bit too hard.  Did I need to work all those hours?   Should I have visited my grandfather one more time than I did?  Did I step on others?  Could I have given more to families in need?

Collectively, when the pot is stirred down, we are going to find you, me, and that half-naked man collecting cans alongside the road.

I had a dream about the end last night.  Not so much about the end.  About my life.  My life was, literally, a tapestry.  The tapestry was framed in wood and made of earthy-colored fibers.  A small crowd of people—strangers—were looking at the tapestry.  I stood there with them.

On the left side of the tapestry, the beginning, the fibers were smooth and tightly woven.  A flower pattern extended for a foot or two from the frame.  As I scanned across the tapestry, the fibers became loose and frayed.  The flower pattern broke apart, became a mix of random colors.

By the end, the tapestry was no more than plain burlap.

From the crowd around me, a man spoke.  “Put your ear against the fibers and listen,” he said.

I bent forward and pressed an ear close to the fibers.  I heard the soft beginning of Ravel’s Bolero.  As I moved across the tapestry, the music grew bigger, more chaotic, crashing.

Bigger than it needed to be!

I woke.

I have been thinking about the tapestry ever since.  I have been thinking about us…collectively.

What are you hearing?

--Mitchell Hegman

The Civil Wars

Posted today is a song by the Civil Wars.

--Mitchell Hegman

If the video I posted fails to launch, click on the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnkM_ebv9BI

Sun Canyon

Yesterday, on a whim, that girl and I drove to Sun Canyon.  We stopped at Sun Canyon Lodge for a Bloody Mary and then drove on to explore some fifty or so miles of gravel road along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

The Front (as we call it) is where the Earth flexes its strongest muscles.  Giant chunks of stone and whole mountains have been upheaved.  The backbones of the Rocky Mountains lie exposed for miles upon miles as you drive along the grassy plains or traverse the foothills on the east side of the Front.

This time of year, the grasslands are sun-bleached.  The green has receded to moist arroyos, low marshes, and back into the Rocky Mountains.  There is a lot of open and a lot of blue sky along the Rocky Mountain Front.

Just the way I like it.

Posted are three photographs from our drive.

--Mitchell Hegman

Pellets and Clumps

On my mother’s side of the family, we can (supposedly) be traced all the way back to the arrival of the Mayflower and her sister ships.  My great grandfather, on that side, was part of the California gold rush.  We have, among our family ranks, Edwin Markham, a famous poet.  According to Wikipedia, six schools in California were named after Edwin Markham.  Schools in other states were named in his honor. 

I suppose I am trying to say that we are kind of a big deal around here.

Just once, I would like my 40 pounds of housecat to acknowledge that as I am scooping their pellets and clumps from the litterbox.

--Mitchell Hegman