The Fundraiser, The Sawmill & The Cat
At first I felt stumped about what to update ya’ll on for this week’s EM blog post, then I remembered it’s been a rather eventful week.
The Fundraiser
On Saturday, we launched an Empty Mountain fundraising campaign on a platform called Donorbox. After a number of planning sessions, we landed on a $10,000 goal (big ask!), to help us purchase a portable sawmill, which will be our on-site workhorse. The sawmill will allow us to make use of our local resources, in order to not only finish our own cabin, but also build other small huts for folks to stay in. We also plan to build a meditation hall and a common-use space (camp style kitchen/general hang area).
If you’re interested in learning more about the fundraiser, please click here.
Personal note: Asking for money is way outside of my comfort zone. It’s really challenging. My practice right now is to remind myself, over & over, that we’re not asking for this money for ourselves, we’re asking for it on behalf of wanting to grow & build community. If it were just a matter of Mike & I living off-grid in the woods, we’d do it on our own. But we’re wanting to build infrastructure in order to have others be able to come and visit, spend time, attend events & retreats, and possibly even live out here, part time or full time. So onward ho with our fundraising efforts!
The Sawmill
In the details of our fundraising campaign, we let folks know that we purchased the sawmill up front, with some of the money we have leftover from selling our house in Missoula. In order to make good use of the short build season here in western Montana, we ordered the sawmill right before we left Deer Park, so we’d have it soon after our return home. The mill arrived last week! We had it delivered to Mike’s brother’s house, which is about 1.5 hours away from EM, mostly cuz we don’t have a physical address as of yet in which to ship things to. Mike spent a good solid 4-days putting it together, with some help from his bro and good friend Chance. He towed the mill home on Tuesday night. And yesterday, he hoisted a log up on it and cut our first couple of boards!
Disappointing note: Turns out, after a rather epic time of getting the sawmill off the tow trailer and he and I using our truck and the van to move it around, Mike discovered that he built the sawmill backwards. The quick of it is, he put the wheels of the trailer the sawmill sits on on the wrong side. Translation: the sawmill was weighted poorly during transport, which caused some complications when we unloaded it. Apparently, it’ll be a relatively easy fix, but it never feels great to learn you’ve assembled something incorrectly.
The Cat
Two nights ago, Mike and I went for a walk on the gravel road that bisects our 20-acres here at EM. About half-a-mile away, there’s a large & lovely meadow, which is situated on acreage owned by an older couple from Minnesota, who come out here once or twice a year. We were going to turn around after enjoying the sights of the meadow, but then decided to walk on a bit further. Soon after passing the meadow, we were met by an unexpected creature on the road: a domestic cat! As Mike & I are the only humans living up here, it was quite strange. Not only did the cat look well cared for, but it was the friendliest little guy ever! It trotted up to us like it had been waiting for us for days, meowing and purring. We went to see if maybe our neighbors had returned. Nope. As it clearly wasn’t a feral cat, nor was there any way it had wintered over out here on its own looking as good as it did, we were baffled. Where did it come from?!
Whelp. It followed us all the way home. The next morning, when I went outside to empty my bladder, I found a dismembered mouse by our front door. Yep. Cats. He’s been hanging out with us ever since. I guess we’ve been adopted!
We’ve named him Larch and he’s just the sweetest. We’re not really sure what we intend on doing with him just yet. While we dearly love cats, we intentionally weren’t in the market for one. At least for now, we’re very much enjoying Larch’s company. He appears to be fairly young, and NOT neutered, so there’s that. So there’s a good chance a vet visit is in our near future. Our best guess is that someone dumped him off in the woods, which is an unfortunate thing people do with unwanted pets sometimes. Oh dear. It seems we’ve just acquired ourselves a cat (at least temporarily).