Regret

I have done plenty of things I regret.  And I have been reflecting on them of late.  If were to list them out, you would see all the common items: hurtful accusations, unwarranted anger, holding back on help, stinginess, and on ad infinitum.  But, more than anything, I regret I didn’t take my grandfather fishing one more time than I did.

—Mitchell Hegman

Nuthatch

I have made my decision.  I want to be a nuthatch.

For one thing, nuthatches will join in with flocks of chickadees and do chickadee things.  I already enjoy watching chickadees.  I think I could hang out with them all day long.  And—who knows—I might enjoy doing chickadee things.

In their personal lives, nuthatches they are monogamous.  Good stuff, that.  Monogamy provides stability and consistency in life.  I could use some of that.       

Perhaps, more than anything, I would love to engage in some of a nuthatch’s quirky behaviors.  I want to walk around upside down on the bottom of tree branches and walk headfirst down the trunks of trees.  Not many birds can do this.  A nuthatch can.

A pair of nuthatches regularly visits my house.  The birds habitually walk up and down the stucco and brick walls of my exterior.  I have seen them join with the chickadees.  And I regularly watch them engage in another clever behavior: caching away “excess” food for future use.  I often witness them wedging seeds from my birdfeeder inside cracks in the bark of nearby trees or stuffing the seeds under pieces of metal trim on the exterior of my house.

I have posted a short video about nuthatches and their unique activities.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnR2xZ9_Iuo 

Panic in the Laundry Room

You don’t need to know my age to prove I have settled into middle age.  There are other more certain signs.  Here is one: This morning, while washing an early load of laundry, I somewhat panicked because I thought I was out of scented dryer sheets.

—Mitchell Hegman

Greta Van Fleet

You’re the One

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2pa-Eb4wLE

A Pointy Little Head in a Hole

While walking along one of the roads near my house the other day, I had an interesting encounter.  As I sauntered along the edge of the road where it cuts through an embankment—THUMP—something hit on the embankment side of me.

I stopped and surveyed the immediate area, but didn’t see anything.  Just sagebrush and grass.

THUMP, again.  Like the sound of someone stamping their feet against the ground right alongside me.

What the…????

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.  Urgent now.

Looking closer to me, almost within hand’s reach, I saw a head in a hole under sagebrush along the embankment.

A pointy little skunk head with beady eyes.

The skunk thwacked the ground with his forepaw as I stared at him.

“I’m certainly glad that I’m seeing your face instead of your ass,” I said to him.

I basically trotted off.

I suppose the thumping was intended to warn me off.  And I bet the skunk would be a little disappointed to know that his skunkiness compelled me to immediately walk on.  That and purple and black stormclouds tussling with themselves just above my head.

—Mitchell Hegman

Between Mountain Ranges

Yesterday, I drove from Helena to Billings by way of Montana Highway 89.  The highway slices between the island mountain range of the Crazy Mountains and the Bridger Range a little west of those.  I stopped at several places and climbed from my car just to take in the day.

The Highway (Through My Windshield)

The Bridger Mountains

A Kit Surfer

The Crazy Mountains

Grass Raked by Wind

—Mitchell Hegman

Dusk

A hard science exists to explain the terms dusk and twilight.  The terms reflect the geometric dance of the planets.  “Civil twilight” describes both light and the space of time between when the Sun first touches the horizon at sunset and the precise moment when the geometric center of the disk reaches six degrees below the horizon.

That exact place, at six degrees below the horizon, is known as “civil dusk.”  Civil dusk, is a seemingly perfect time when shades of pink and yellow and orange and sometimes purple are sent glancing off cloud bottoms and painted across the expanse.  This is the time of a photographer’s dream.  And there is still enough light that we might run at full speed and not stumble on something unseen.

The next six degrees of light and time are known as nautical twilight.  This is when shadows around us connect together to form a whole.  The sky itself darkens and turns into a cobalt blue.  Upon reaching the next marker, at twelve degrees below the horizon, we have reached "nautical dusk."

Those of us still standing in place now enter “astronomical twilight,” which represents the final six-degree plunge into full darkness.  The plunge ends at "astronomical dusk."  More commonly known as night.

In the mountains, given the constant changes in elevation at all sides, the horizon is a tricky item to either see or define.  We must abandon science, and stand on the nearest rock for a sensory appraisal.  We may require something more romantic and less precise.  The famed Montana-born writer Norman Mclean wrote in A River Runs Through It about a certain light at the end of summer day in Montana:

 “Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.”

—Mitchell Hegman