Eleven Years

Today marks eleven years since Uyen Hegman passed.  Those years, each filled with arrivals and departures of their own, have done nothing to dim Uyen’s smile. 

California Coast, 1987

Hogum Creek, 2002

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, 2009

—Mitchell Hegman

Essentials

My list of essentials:

• Teamwork
• The scent of huckleberries
• A good stick for poking the campfire
• One syllable answers
• Not leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight
• A good campfire
• Elk or deer just around the corner
• Americana music
• Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
• Clear stones
• Torx  screws
• Dreams of fish

—Mitchell Hegman

Highway 434

Montana Highway 434 is one is one of my favorite drives in all the world.  Though only 18 miles long, the highway crosses through quintessential Montana landscape between Highway 200 and Wolf Creek.  This is where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountain Front. 

I particularly love how the highway whips out across the miles of rumpled grasslands alongside the mountains.  Always with clouds roving the sky above.

Moreover, I have never encountered traffic on Highway 434.  I have encountered cattle and mule deer, but never traffic.

Posted are a couple of quick photographs captured with my smarter-than-me-phone, as Desiree and I made our way home on highway 434.

 

The Lone Tree

The Long Road

—Mitchell Hegman

Cabin Season

Desiree and I officially kicked off “cabin season” for 2022 by overnighting at the cabin.  On Saturday morning, we drove up and over Flesher Pass, encountering a snowstorm near the top.

At midday our creek-side neighbors, Patrick and Mary, joined us for conversation, dark beers, hotdogs, and brats.  We cooked the hotdogs and brats over a campfire.  All the while, true to form, Montana provided us with sunshine, rain, and another brief snowstorm.  The snow fell in the form of little balls.  Desiree, watching the balls bounce off the jacket she borrowed from me, remarked: “This snow is like styrofoam.”

“It is,” I confirmed, recalling how the Inuit have several dozen words for snow.  I don’t think, however, “styrofoam” is one of them.

After our lunch, we hiked over to our neighbor’s place and poked around the forest for a bit.  We found a few glacier lilies and shootingstar just now at the beginning of their bloom.

After the departure of our neighbors, a final curtain of snow whisked through our narrow mountain valley.  Warming sunshine soon followed that.  Desiree and I sat near the woodstove inside the cabin and watched through the windows as pines swayed all around us.

This, our spring lullaby.

Desiree Tending the Fire

Patrick, Mary, Desiree, and Bristol (the dog) Watching Lunch Cook

A Glacier Lily

—Mitchell Hegman

Lost in Familiarity

If you have lived your life in a given place, it is only natural that you tune-out a lot of every-day experiences and familiar occurrences.  When I was nineteen, I accompanied a city kid from the Midwest on a summer night of partying here in the valley.   We entered the first stop of the night—a house party—as daylight fizzled away on the mountains around us.

When we emerged from the house some hours later, the city kid froze in his tracks there in the darkness.  “Wow, look at that,” he said while peering up at the sky.

“Look at what?” I asked.     

“The sky is all stars.  Is it always like this?”

“Well, yeah.  It’s the sky.”

“That’s not what my sky looks like,” the city kid remarked.

Something along the same lines occurred as Desiree and I stood on the back deck chatting.  “What is that sound?” she asked during a break in conversation.

“What sound?” I asked.

Desiree pointed toward the nearby pine trees.

“Oh, that.”  I smiled.  “That’s the sound of wind through the pine trees.”

“It’s pretty loud,” Desiree noted.  “But I like it.”

I listened for a moment.  “I like it, too.”

Though the Philippines features a few pine forests, Desiree has never seen them.  I have been listening to wind through the pines for so long, I normally tune out the sound.  I am happy to have Desiree teach me how to pay attention to everything around me again.

—Mitchell Hegman

Radio Pest Control

I am in the process of installing a shading system in my sunroom.  The system is complex enough I decided to read the instructions before I screw up rather than after.

One type of bracket used to fasten a series of rails to the existing structure is a wee bit too long.  To remedy the problem, I hiked down the hill to my neighbor’s shop so I could grind-down one side of each bracket enough for a proper fit.   

My neighbor, Kevin, leaves a tinny-sounding radio perpetually playing in the shop.  The radio is tuned into a country station.  “I am hoping it will keep the mice out,” he told me when I asked him why the radio was always on.

My taste for country music is limited.  As soon as I entered the shop, I found myself cringing at the song I heard.  Once I got to work, the grinder completely drowned out the radio.  But each time I stopped grinding, the worst kind of over-produced and formulaic songs assaulted me.

As I gathered up my brackets and gloves after completing my work, it occurred that I had found no sign of mice in the shop.  I think the radio trick (and the station selection) is working.

—Mitchell Hegman

First Snow

For every 4,131 people in Montana hoping they will never see snow again (Keith Allen counts for two in this regard), there is one person wanting nothing more than to find some snow.  Yesterday, I drove the one person wanting to see snow to the top of MacDonald and dumped her out onto a drift alongside the road.

Obviously, I am talking about Desiree.  And the drift I found for her near the top of the pass was the first snow she had ever encountered in her life.

“I can’t believe it,” she exclaimed as she stomped around on the squishy drift.  “I’m in snow!”

As Desiree pranced about in the snow, a dozen or so automobiles filled with snow-haters swooped around the bend in the highway nearest us.

“This is so cool!” she said.

The huge drifts on the lee side of the snow fences as the crest of the pass also impressed Desiree.  “You’ll see plenty of snow before we are through,” I assured her.  “Snow is a thing here in Montana.” 

 

Desiree’s First Snow

—Mitchell Hegman