Summer in the Woods

Normally I craft an EM blog post once a week, but I skipped last week since we wonderfully had two friends visiting and staying with us for a few days. One of our friends stayed in our van - aka our guest bedroom on wheels - and the other friend was the first person to stay in our newly constructed guest hut.

Part of our EM plan has always been to slowly build infrastructure, as we aren’t just out here living in the woods for our own pleasure and preference alone. We want folks to come and visit and stay with us too. And we plan on continuing to host day events and overnight retreats. Nearly everything we do in terms of improving our living systems and building new structures is with others in mind.

While the guest hut isn’t finished yet, it’s guest stay ready, which is nice for the summer months. We now have a place to offer folks to stay with a real bed and walls and a door. Not everyone is into camping, so it’s nice we have the hut. And come winter, the hut will serve as my writing space and library. I’m looking forward to having a place to put my small writing desk, which has been living in our storage container since we sold our house in Missoula in 2021. I’m also looking forward to having access to the books I kept when we downsized in preparation to buy land. Right now they too are dwelling inside of our storage container.

We had a cold snap when our friends were visiting, which prompted Mike to figure out how to install the small diesel heater we were planning to hook up to the hut, but didn’t think we’d need until the fall. Our friend who stayed in the hut was 86 years old and we wanted her to be warm. Fortunately it didn’t take too much to get it going. And it was easy for her to operate by a remote control that came with the unit, which was an added bonus. She said it worked great. One of the nice things about having a small dwelling place is it heats up right quick with little effort. We will be interested to see how the heater operates this winter, when the temps outside are below freezing.

The hut will see at least 2 or 3 more guests over the next couple of months, so it will be getting good use. I’m still honing in all of what to put in there for folks that would be helpful or nice to have. Pretty much everything in there right now was donated to us. We are very lucky and feel fortunate to have such generous friends and family.

What else? Oh! We had the great pleasure of exploring a new lake in our neck of the woods when our friends were here. In the county where we live there are 56 lakes, most of which require a hike to get to. We went to Diamond Lake (which we’ve been to before), which you can drive right up to, but a short hike past that is Cliff Lake. And in a word, Cliff Lake is stunning. And the hike to it was rich with amazing wildflowers and waterfalls. We will definitely be going back there. Our backyard here at EM is chock full of beauty spots.

Montana in the summertime is nourishment for the heart and soul. The mountains are singing with praise and the waters are pulsing with vibrant energy. And just last week we started seeing spotted fawns emerging from the woods with their mamas. So. In other words. Life is good.

Prep Work