Starting the Hermitage
We’re starting to notice the fading light now earlier in the evening. And despite the still super warm days - typically with highs in the 90’s - it tends to cool off quickly as soon as the sun starts going down. Some mornings are so brisk that I fire up the wood stove in the wall tent or kick on our little propane heater in the van. What an ongoing dynamic situation it is to live so closely to the outdoors.
After discussing different options in regards to what our first build project would be, we’ve decided to start construction on what we’re calling the hermitage. A small 12X14 dwelling place we hope to finish before we head back to Deer Park Monastery in October for the winter. Having a small hermitage will allow us to have something a little more substantial to live out of than our van. It will also afford us the ability to have something we can insulate well, that will keep us warmer in the cooler months and cooler in the warmer months. Our dear van, while a great little home on wheels, just roasts during the day and isn’t able to hold the heat in very well in the springtime months.
Mike is having a go at Korean style timber framing for the hermitage. He’s been following a gifted Korean woodworker on YouTube named Wood Wood, who’s teaching him everything he knows. We fell our first big tree a few days ago in preparation, as we’re planning on harvesting most of the wood we’ll need for the hermitage from the land. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, energetically. We were acutely aware of our responsibility as land caretakers in the taking of a tree life. What a site - and feeling! - to watch the douglas fir come down. Mike later counted the rings: 105-years-old.
Switching.
We’ve been traveling to Missoula once a week on Mondays, to attend sangha and do errands that we can only do in Missoula, which is the closest largest town. Our small nearby town of Superior has a lot of great amenities, but there are a number of things we can only get and do in Missoula. Over the past couple of weeks especially, we’ve been tooling up. Long trips to the Home Depot in Missoula have been commonplace (side note: I’m pretty sure the HD is one of Mike’s happy places but it is definitely not one of mine).
Last week, we sent back the inverter/controller that operates our two 200-watt solar panels. The machine just wound up not being quite what we needed, not that we super know what we need, mind you. Have I mentioned we’re new at all this?! We have another one that Mike ordered on the way. Hopefully it’ll do the trick. In the meantime, we’ve been back to living sans power. We have a generator a friend of ours has generously lent us but we have yet to use it. Turns out, we really don’t need all that much juice to get by. We can power up our phones in our vehicles and the sun rises early and sets late this time of year, so it’s not like we need much in the way of artificial lights. And I can power up my two laptops (I use one for working remotely and I use my smaller one for writing blog posts and other things) when I work remotely from the Open Way Mindfulness Center in Missoula on Mondays and from the library in Superior on Wednesdays. We have a white gas and a propane cook stove and we’ve been doing ice in coolers for food storage.
Switching.
It’s worth mentioning, I think, that Mike and I are a divide & conquer sort of couple. He and I have very different skill-sets and interests. In many ways, we are one of those opposites attract sort of pairings. As such, we gravitate towards very different elements of what it takes to live off-grid. It’s also worth mentioning that Mike has a much higher natural ability to be a duck in water with how we’re living right now and what we’re doing, whereas for me, I’m on a steep learning curve.
When it comes to developing Empty Mountain, Mike is our builder. He’s the visionary for our infrastucture and he’ll be the primary one to make things happen on the building & trails/roads through the land front. Me, whelp, I am our logistics manager. I’m also the maker of food, primary maker of money, organizer, and EM program planner. I also take care of all of our computer oriented needs: website updating, blog writing, YouTube uploading, newsletter crafting, and social media posting. I am the community builder of our dynamic duo and Mike is the building builder. Both parts are needed for ripening the small budding fruit of Empty Mountain into an active practice center and community.
Wonderfully, wonderfully, we’re hosting our inaugural EM DOM this Sunday. (Empty Mountain day of mindfulness.) While there will be much to do on the physical level for some time - hermitage, main cabin, a storage/shop building, tiny cabins for visitors to stay in, a meditation hall… - we don’t want to put off developing EM program events and creating opportunities for folks to come together. We figure those who are up for roughing it in the woods can start joining us now, right where we are with what little we have in place. We anticipate organizing work parties and maybe even alternative building retreats. And next summer, I’d like to see us organize & host a camping retreat.
Since we are also interested in developing programming that combines our mindfulness practice tradition with elements from Mike’s work with the ManKind Project, we also envision men’s weekends being hosted here, and all gender circles and group work too.
But we’ll start right where we are. And take things one slow step at a time.
Breathing in, I am aware there is much work to be done.
Breathing out, there is no way TO the practice, the practice IS the way.