Shower House Build
Mike with one of the clear plastic panels that will serve as the roof to the shower house
Since we moved on the land in July 2022, and Empty Mountain started sprouting here in the woods of western Montana, we’ve been using solar bag set ups to take showers. The kind you can buy at an outdoors store, designed to be used whilst camping. But the season for comfortably using such things is short here in Montana, so for much of the year we grab showers elsewhere. Mostly in Missoula at the homes of our lovely friends.
In preparation for remote, off-grid living, prior to moving on the land, I intentionally scaled back to showering once a week. It wasn’t a huge stretch, as I’ve never been a daily showerer, but it did take some adjusting to. I now go to Missoula once a week on Mondays, to sit with my sangha Be Here Now and also do some errands, so I shower on Mondays in Missoula. Mike, on the other hand, mostly stays put here at EM, so his access to showers is much more limited. He also has more of a beast-of-burden sort of mentality in him (which has both benefits and detriments). Translation: he manages fairly well with taking far less showers than I do. Last year, I considered cutting off my long mane of hair for practical reasons, as I think I could do less showering, or at least quicker showering, by having way less hair. But it never felt all the way like the right thing to do, so with me my long hair remains.
Wonderfully, this past week, Mike has been working on a new build to help remedy our access to showering. Figuring out a way to shower out here in the woods, without depending on summertime in order to do so, was never not on our mental list of things to do. But up until now, we simply had more pressing things to tend to. Like figuring out where to get water from and how to store it. Building our cabin to have a place to live. And figuring out our system and set up for solar powered electricity. Shoot, for us, even getting cell service and Wi-Fi was more pressing than a long-term solution for showering. But the time has come and a shower house is now at hand.
After leveling a bit of ground close to the cabin (see pic above), and drafting up some designs on Google sketchup, and putting hours of research in on possible water pump/heater units to buy & use, Mike set to constructing a 5X7 shower stall, using some stellar wood we were recently gifted by a friend of Mike’s named Ron, which was generously transported to us from Helena by our friend Chance.
Important & heartfelt note: We are so very grateful for all of the love, support and assistance we’ve received, and continue to receive, from our tribe of friends & family. In its early and humble beginnings, Empty Mountain is being made and crafted by many hearts and hands.
We still have yet to unbox the pump/heater unit we purchased, which I picked up this past Monday at our post office in Missoula where we fetch our mail, after a stressful week before that where the same unit was shipped out and got sent back or lost or who knows what for reasons unknown. We plan to figure out the shower unit later today. Sidenote: a future EM upgrade I am looking forward to is the day when we might have an actual address attached to where we live, although our remote gravel road might be enough to deter delivery drivers. (The whole us not having a physical address is a big long thing that maybe I will go into detail about in another blog post. In short: I’ve looked into what it will take and it involves money we don’t feel is necessary to spend in order to get land testing we don’t technically need.)
I am getting enough boots-on-the-ground lessons these days about how building projects simply require more time than one often wants to give them. So while part of me remains hopeful that the pump/heater shower unit we purchased will work as we hope and expect right out of the box; that it will be an easy install and we’ll be up and running and ready to take a warm shower, say, later today or tomorrow, sparing me from the minor hassle of needing to squeeze in a shower at a friend’s house on Monday between errands and before sangha, a bigger part of me is prepared for the distinct possibility that everything will not go as planned and preferred. Like maybe we’ll need a length of hose or a clamp or a few screws we don’t have. Or maybe the long-awaited unit won’t even work, or it won’t work nearly as good as we thought it would. Time will tell. Point is, I’m beginning to think I’m starting to maybe possibly get a little better at entering into the vast territory of the unknown. It’s not easy growth work to do, but I also feel pretty sure it’s good work for me to do.
The floor on the left is made with layers of rock, gravel, sand, and wood rounds and is intended for water draining purposes under where the shower will be stationed.