Arrived!
We arrived home to Empty Mountain on Thursday April 13, after 3 lovely days on the road en route from Deer Park Monastery in SoCal (well done Ollister, our 1989 Chevy G20 van!). Since we moved onto the land on July 1 of last year, we didn’t know what to expect upon our return. Lots of snow? Some snow? No snow? It was anyone’s guess. The answer: just a few small snow pockets here & there.
The gravel road EM is situated on, which boasts a total of 5 residences, most of who live out of state and visit only on occasion, is county maintained and is in stellar condition. All car types would have no prob making their way to us, which was an important criteria for us when we were in the land-search biz. So it was smooth sailing when we pulled in.
Over the course of the next few days, we spent our time getting our lives figured out. Our priorities were to: get our vehicles uncovered and running and out (which we left on the land over the winter, wrapped & strapped in a giant tarp to hopefully keep the mice out); assemble the large canopy tent, in order to have covered storage for our tools and other items we don’t want taking up prime real estate inside our small 12 X 14 dwelling; unpack the van; and get some wood chopped for the woodstove, which wonderfully Mike finished installing the day before we left for Deer Park in late October. Mike had to do a bit of snow shoveling in order to get our car & truck out, but both started up and managed to get out our makeshift driveway without a hitch. We took all of our batteries with us to Deer Park (truck battery; car battery; the batteries for our motorcycles; and our two solar panel system batteries), so we could tend well to them and trickle-charge them over the winter months.
We were welcomed home by rather unseasonably warm temperatures for the first few days, with highs in the 60’s during the day. We discovered that due to the amount of insulation we installed inside our hertmitage’s floor, walls & ceiling, we average around 20-degrees warmer than the outside temperature, without the woodstove in use. Pretty great, right?! In the mornings, it was around 50-degrees inside (with the woodstove having gone out hours ago) and just under 30-degrees outside.
While we aren’t novices when it comes to making a campfire, there is an art to learning & mastering the ways of the woodstove, which neither of us are well-skilled at yet. Everything takes practice, including me learning how to wield a chainsaw and an ax to make firewood. We ordered an electric chainsaw to help me with this new endeavor and Mike showed me how to use an ax over the weekend. I reckon I’ll be able to help a bit with preparing wood, though I will need to keep a close eye on my nerve condition and make sure not to overdo it, as vibration and hard contact can kick up nerve symptoms in my hands.
What else to share about our first week home? Oh, right, update on the animals at EM front! We’ve taken a few walkabouts, to see what’s shakin around the property as spring slowly starts to unfold, and have come across a LOT of both deer & elk scat. We also found what we’re assuming is mountain lion scat, though we’re not sure about that one. We have a couple of curious chipmunk friends just outside of our hermitage and we’ve heard rough-necked grouse and turkeys close by. Over the weekend, there were loads of butterflies flitting about, which was a splendid delight, and we’ve seen some birds starting to emerge as well.
This post marks the start of our return to weekly blog posting, so stay tuned as we evolve alongside springtime in the mountains, and continue to learn the ropes of how to live off-grid in the woods, while slow-growing our small-sprouting practice center Empty Mountain.