Shift to Summer
In what seems like fast order, and also a little earlier in the year than usual, we went from having one small fire in the wood stove per day to stay warm to engaging in a number of strategies to keep the cabin cool amid the high temperatures in the afternoon, such as: opening the windows in the early morning to cool down the cabin before the heat of the day sets in; opening and closing the cabin door to enter & exit as quickly as possible; bringing the cook stove outside to make dinner, so as not to introduce more heat inside; and installing an outside roller shade on our porch, which greatly increases our usage of the porch during peak heat hours and helps to further cut back on the radiant sun infiltrating into our cabin.
Memorial Day weekend marked the start of the weather shift here at EM. Not only are we experiencing temps in the upper 80’s in the afternoon, but we’re now at the point where the two 12-volt house batteries we run on for electricity are filled to the max from our two 200-watt solar panels at around 1:30pm. So we’ve entered into the relatively small window period of the year where we no longer need to make use of our generator to help supplement our electricity needs. According to the notes I keep - the Empty Mountain almanac as I like to call it - we have about 3-months out of the year where we have enough sun to provide us with all of our electricity needs. Last year, we started firing up the generator in late August.
The shift towards summer has begun. Not just in weather, temperature, and the return of the bugs, but also, wonderfully, in friends and family coming to visit too. Soon we’ll have the pleasure of hosting our first friend to stay in the new guest hut! We won’t have the interior wall cladding installed by the time they arrive, nor will we have finished floors, but it’s well insulated and ready to roll in terms of being a nice indoor space to sleep. I am someone who places a lot of value in being a good host, so my sincere hope is that folks are comfortable temperature wise, as that’s really what it comes down to mostly out here. I want folks to be warm enough in the night when it’s cold out and not overheat when it’s hot out during the day, which sometimes requires forward thinking and creative solutions out here in the woods, living as rustically as we do. We also have our Chevy G20 van set up for folks to stay in, which requires a different set of actions to help ensure folks stay comfortable, or at least as comfortable as possible.
The dark of night is peeling back earlier and earlier in the morning and lingering longer at the end of the day. Around 4:30 am is when I start noticing light in the sky, and around 10 pm is when it starts getting darker. And just yesterday, on May 31, we reached almost 90-degrees here at EM, which prompted my friend Sara who was here visiting and I to take ourselves and her two pups down to the river.
More and more flowers are blooming, which is always a treat to see. One of my favorites right now is the elegant mariposa lily, also known as cat’s ear. And this past week I started collecting yarrow and oregon grape, both of which grow in abundance here at EM, for the purposes of making tea. I’m hoping that, come August, it will be a good huckleberry yield year, as last year our local huckleberries were slim picking.
I appreciate living in such a way that puts us more in touch with the rhythm cycles of the seasons. And I am especially grateful for living in western Montana, where we experience each of the four seasons, versus a more moderate climatescape where only minor changes in weather can be noted throughout the year. No one place in the world is for everyone, but this place, surely, is for us here at Empty Mountain. Here’s to the humble wish that all of us find our place on the planet that feels like home.
