Emptying & Filling
Autumn colors approaching on the mountain
Early mornings are pin drop quiet at Empty Mountain. The woods are the darkest dark and the trees are the stillest still. There is no intrusion of artificial lighting or orange sky-glow from town.
On August 28, I lit a fire in the woodstove. The time prior to that was on June 16. Lately our temps have swung back into the 80’s during the day though, and the nights are pleasantly in the low 50’s or upper 40’s. Fires in the woodstove have therefor not been necessary inside our small cabin. But most assuredly that will soon change, as here in the mountains of Montana, summer spills quickly into the chill and loveliness of autumn in the month of September.
Regular chores here at EM involve a lot of emptying and filling, especially given that we don’t have running water. Ongoing upkeep consists of such things as: filling the bottom bucket of the foot pump sink inside the cabin with rain water collected in barrels from the roof; emptying the top bucket of the pump sink where the waste water is collected; filling the sawdust buckets beside each of our two compost toilets; emptying & cleaning the loo buckets; filling the small canisters of propane that we use on our 2-burner Coleman cook stove; filling the basin we use for washing dishes in the morning and emptying it at the end of the day; filling up the jug with potable water inside the cabin; and filling up the plastic water-cooler we use outdoors for hand washing and rinsing dishes.
As the seasons are shifting, so too is the sun. We are situated in a narrow canyon here at EM, and since we operate off-grid, we rely solely on the ability to charge our lithium iron batteries for all of our electricity needs. In the months of July and August, our PV panels get enough access to the sun to run on full time. But outside of this 2-month window, we need to supplement with our gas-powered generator to fill our batteries. Being tethered to the sun for electricity has created an interesting relationship between us and the seasons and weather. A relationship that feels at times stressful and at other times exhilarating. All in all though, I’d say this new way of connecting and interacting with the sun is giving us a newfound appreciation for the bounty of its life-giving light.