Questions to Ask a Significant Other Prior to Marriage

1.  Have you found either a pirate or a horse thief in your family tree?

2.  Do you have any keys hidden under a rock?

3.  Potato chips or chocolate chips?

4.  If you had the power to do so, what song would you ban from play on all radio stations?

5.  Would you like to see Wile E. Coyote catch the Road Runner, just once?

6.  If you are undercharged at a store checkout, do you tell the checker or walk out with an “inadvertent discount?”

7.  What do you hear in silence?

8.  What do you see in darkness?

9.  Under what circumstances do find swearing appropriate?

10.  What song makes you snap your fingers?

11.  Are you willing to kiss in public?

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Kurt Vonnegut Said

—Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

—Science is magic that works.

—Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

Black and Bones, Blue and Sky

As weird as this sounds, I like finding bones when I am walking about in the wilds.  Bones tell stories.  Often, they reveal stories of predation.  One of the most remarkable stories told by bones, I saw in something of a ramshackle private “museum” on Jim Town Road in the mountains between Canyon Ferry Dam and the tiny mountain town of York, Montana.  On display there was, if memory serves, the pelvic bone from a bison.  What made this bone so extraordinary, was the fact a stone arrowhead was embedded halfway in the bone.  The ancient bone had been unearthed that way.

Now, that’s a story!

At a minimum, bones provide mysteries.  From what creature this bone?   Why in that spot?

Yesterday, on a walk through a dry and sparsely forested gully near my house, I found a scattering of bones amid short tufts of blue grama grass.  Only a few seconds of poking at bones, made me realize they were the somewhat spiky remains a carp.

Now, that’s interesting!

I found the collection of carp bones something near ¼-mile from the lake.  How did a carp—a big one—find its way so far inland?  Osprey?  Had a raccoon dragged the fish there?

Naturally (being me), I carefully gathered up the bones, tossed them in inside my overturned hat, and carried them home.  I am thinking about arranging them somehow.

Night before last, we experienced a most amazing sunset.  Such deep blue colors are rare and ephemeral.  For reasons not completely clear to me, (other than I like the way the title of this blog rings in my ears), I have included photographs of that sunset on this blog.

Black and Bones

Blue and Sky

—Mitchell Hegman

A Firm Answer

I have given this careful consideration and settled on a firm answer.  Therefore, if the question is asked of me: “Mitch, what is the stupidest thing you have ever said?,” I have an answer.

Somewhere around 1982, as a nontraditional student (read ‘older’ here), I attended classes at Montana State University.  One of the classes I attended explored the inequities of the criminal justice system.  The class was fairly intimate and filled with thoughtful and friendly young students.

I have forgotten the exact circumstances, but one afternoon a totally blind man sat in on a lecture.  His German shepherd service dog dutifully sat alongside him.  At some point, during a break in lecture, I and a few other students in the class engaged the blind man in a discussion about his service dog.  The man explained that he wanted to be cautious about too much affection toward the dog from others.  He also discouraged others from offering treats to the dog.

“It’s important that he does not get distracted,” the man told us.

This is the point at which I said a stupid thing to the blind man.  “So,” I said, “you really have to keep any eye on other people.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Spring: Northern Rockies Style

Spring has arrived officially in the Northern Rockies.  The arrival is marked by the emergence of glacier lilies at my cabin.  They are the first wildflowers to bloom.  The lilies appear immediately following the receding of winter’s deep snows.

Glacier lilies are also among the most prolific of the wildflowers near my cabin.  Yesterday, walking there, I encountered a few hundred of them.  Within a week there will be thousands upon thousands.

The creek near the cabin is also swollen and three temporary, snowmelt springs are flouncing down through the forest understory on my property.

Where the creek lashes down through my meadow, it is attended by pussy willows.  The willows like to keep their feet wet.  Pussy willows wake even earlier than the lilies.  I saw fuzzy little “kitten paws” developing on the branches of the pussy willows two weeks ago—even though the willows were still standing there in a foot of winters remaining snowpack.  The paws are the early stage of the pussy willow flower.  The paws have, by now, exploded into full fuzz-ball flowering mode.  Because they emerge so early (by Rocky Mountain Standards) the willows don’t rely on pollinators.  The warming wind is part of their sexual cycle.

Glacier Lilies

Pussy Willows Near the Creek

—Mitchell Hegman

The Chickadee of Death

Chickadees are tiny birds.  They also produce rather charming, soft dee-dee-dee sounds and flit about somewhat erratically.  They are by nature sociable and non-poisonous.

The chickadees near my house have been exceptionally friendly toward me since I started feeding them seeds regularly.  Many of them are comfortable with landing on my hand to take seeds. On several occasions, a chickadee has landed on my head while I stood near their feeder.

For the past week or so, around midday, I have raised my garage door, dragged a folding chair out near my Mayday tree, and sat there reading a hardback novel in warming sunlight.  I did so again yesterday.  While sitting there, engrossed in a particularly complicated passage (involving some sex), I was “attacked” by the chickadee of death.

The bird shot out of the nearby and landed suddenly on the top of my book as I held it in front of my face.  For an instant, I thought (irrationally) I was a goner.  I gasped (I think the bird did, too) and pulled back from the book.

Just as abruptly as the chickadee appeared, the bird tumbled away through the air.

—Mitchell Hegman

Weak Coffee

Posted is a photograph of the coffee I brewed this morning.  Apparently, putting coffee grounds in the coffee maker’s basket is an important step in the coffee-making process.

Lesson learned.

—Mitchell Hegman

NOTE: As told by the color of the water in my coffee carafe, I did manage to thoroughly clean the coffee basket with scalding water.  So, I have that going for me.