The Practicalities & Poetry of Empty Mountain
We are back in the woods of Empty Mountain, after three months spent away. We departed on November 9 and returned home on February 19. As I type this post, on Friday February 21 at 7am, the thermometer reads 30-degrees. And a white gown of snow blankets the ground.
I am nothing if not a dame who is whole-heartedly interested & invested in practicing how to balance & blend both the practicalities & the poetry of living. So this is a post that highlights a little of both, to resume our EM blog posting, after a few months on hiatus. (Long post alert.)
The Practicalities
Okay. So. Learning how to winter over in the woods of EM living as we do, off-grid and without running water, is a whole thing. Warmer weather living is relatively easy. Winter weather living, on the other hand, is next-level. We intentionally returned home a little earlier then we have the past two years, so that we could slow-roll our way into figuring out how to do winter here, as our tentative plan is to spend either all of or the bulk of next winter here at home. So this is us getting some practice at what it will take to do winter at Empty Mountain.
A number of unknowns awaited us. How traversable would our gravel road be? How much snow would we be greeted by? How accessible will our cabin be? Will the antenna that gives us cell signal and access to 4G for wi-fi connection work in the super cold? Then there’s the matter of water hauling and storage; getting the generator going for charging up our house batteries for electricity; figuring out how to gather more firewood in the snow when our stockpile dwindles; and learning what to do with our compost toilet set up when the loo buckets are frozen through.
The gravel road that leads to EM, which is county maintained, was plowed and easy to drive down, which was a big relief. We knew we would need to park up on the road, versus being able to access our dirt driveway, due to snow, so that was a given. We stomped a path to the cabin, and in some places my snowboots sunk down as far as my knees. In a matter of minutes we were inside the cabin, where everything looked just as we had left it. We got a fire going in the woodstove and started unpacking the van, one trip up & down our snowy footpath at a time.
On our way through Missoula, we picked up our cat Larch, who spent the winter with our good friends Sarah and Marko, and their three other housemates, as well as a cat named Eddie. Side note: We did not anticipate the “problem” of Larch & Eddie becoming close buds - we felt so bad separating them! (See pic below that one of Sarah’s housemates took and that she added the quote to.) Delightfully, Larch took to returning back home to the woods way quicker then he did last year. He was immediately interested in following us around in the snow, navigating by way of our boot tracks.
Larch is on the left and Eddie is on the right
As good battery owners, we brought our house batteries with us to Deer Park, in order to maintain them well over the winter and then charge them up before we headed home. So we were able to plug them into our charge controller and had electricity and our cell phone booster up and running in short order.
We set ourselves up pretty well when we left in terms of coming home to a certain amount of firewood prepped and empty loo buckets. We also stored well what needed to be stored well. But we also made some rookie mistakes. For example, we pulled the ATV inside the storage container first and then added our motorcycles. So to get the ATV out, and hooked up to the snow plow attachment that came with it, all as a gift from Mike’s dad, now requires us to maneuver out the bikes first. Also. We left the snow plow attachment somewhere off in the trees, and not in a super accessible spot. I also realized yesterday that the potable water hose that I use to fill water in town is inside my car, which is tarped to the hilt and covered in ice & snow. Have I mentioned lately that we’re still new at this?
On the water front, we rolled in with around 9-gallons of potable water. Until we can store water outside without it freezing, we’ll have to keep all of our water inside the cabin. And until we can collect rain water in our barrels - also without it freezing - when I haul drinking & cooking water from Missoula, I will simply haul extra water for the purposes of hand & dish washing. However, we are also testing out melting snow, to make use of in our foot pump sink. I’d always heard about how when you melt snow, you get only a fraction of the amount in water once it melts. Yeah, so, turns out that’s super true. Already in our short time home, I’ve learned that when I fill a 5-gallon bucket with snow, it takes around 15-20 hours to melt inside the cabin, and it yields a little less than ⅓ of the bucket in water. Additionally, while it’s probably not a huge deal, our cabin is so small that bringing in a full bucket of snow does have a cooling effect to our dwelling space. So it’s not super efficient in terms of water production, but we figure every little bit helps, so for now we’re still collecting & melting snow to use for washing water.
The Poetry
Early this morning, I sat by the wood stove sipping coffee, reading & writing poetry. And while yes, there was literal poetry taking place, the metaphorical kind felt more alive for me in the art and heart of the moment. The crackle of the wood. The blazing orange-reds of the fire. The deep appreciation I felt in relationship to the trees that rooted down and reached up for years and years, before providing warmth to our small cabin in the big woods.
The poet in me is growing more and more as time goes on. And I consider this to be both really good news and a good sign that my spiritual practice path is leading me in the direction I most aspire to journey in. The direction of heartfulness. Of true love. Of close kinship. Of the spirit-fire of living.
There is poetry in the woods, dear friends. Poetry in the trees. Poetry in the quietude that is generated here at Empty Mountain. And I am discovering there is poetry in simple living. In chopping wood and hauling water. In doing less and feeling into the gift of living more.
There is poetry on the path of spiritual practice. And I think perhaps the two are not separate, but are one. With feet steady on the path of practice, poetry is what emerges as a natural response to our ability to cultivate mindfulness and heartfulness.
May I do my best to remind myself - 10, 100, 1,000 times a day - that every moment presents the possibility of poetry in motion.
