Voluntary Simplicity

What it looks like here today at EM on June 28, 2026

Here in the woods of Empty Mountain, we are living the slow(er) life. We are opting to live differently than the mainstream around us. We are choosing to live simply, more connected to our living systems and the land. To nature and the seasons. Rather than working a job to earn money to live, we are entering into a new relationship with what it means to be alive and human. We are trying to flip the script a bit and see if we can “switch time wealth for cash poorness.”

I fell in love with this wording just this morning: “switching time wealth for cash poorness.” They were words spoken by a man named Patrick in a great documentary I watched this morning called The New Peasants. It speaks directly to what Mike and I are trying to do here at EM. (For more info about the film, including where/how to watch it online, click here.)

It’s a chilly and overcast 49-degrees (9C) as I type this post on Sunday June 28. Our high slated for today is 50. We wound up needing to run the gas-powered generator on Friday and we’ll need to run it again today. Overcast days for us mean no solar charging the house batteries we run on for electricity through our PV panels. We did get a nice .25 inches of rain though 2 days ago, and it looks like we’ll get a fair amount tomorrow. When the sun’s out, we get electricity. When it rains, we get water in our collection tanks.

In The New Peasants, the couple and their son who were featured in the film have a large framed sign on the wall in their main living area that showcases the words: Birth, School, Work, Death. But all of the words are hung upside down, like this:

The sign was never spoken directly about in the film. It was just there in the background. Like art or a poem, one can ascertain whatever meaning speaks or resonates for them personally. My takeaway from it is this: while I wholeheartedly believe there are as many ways to live a good life as the amount of people on the planet, I also believe our big mainstream systems have a lot of things backwards and upside down. Personally I don’t see our systems as being broken, though it seems many people in certain circles do. I see our mainstream societies as being aimed at specific things that are designed to take us in the direction of disconnection and distraction. To me, broken implies there’s something wrong or bad or not supposed to be happening. When in truth, the kind of world we have was and is intentionally crafted. Things are operating exactly as they were designed to.

The Buddha taught, this is because that is.

While it takes an extra amount of courage and a high level of interest in living an alternative lifestyle that doesn’t abide by the mainstream creeds that foster a very specific prescription of success, personal worth, and happiness, we are fortunate to live in a time when we have an immense level of choice. Much more so than even 50 years ago, in my view. For those of us who don’t want to go the normal route of working 40-80 hours a week for a paycheck just to get by to make ends meet, there are other pathways that exist. I feel strongly that we live in a golden age for this. There are an increasing amount of people helping to lead the way. People gravitating to unlearning the values we’ve been force fed to believe lead us to living our best life, but often result in chronic discontent, profound exhaustion, loneliness, emotional suppression, fear, hopelessness, cynicism, and despair. 

Voluntary simplicity doesn’t have one look or take one shape. We find our own way and make it our own. For one person it means living in a big town or city and using a bike instead of a car to get around or taking public transportation to get to work. For another person it means committing to reducing the amount of packaging they purchase at the store. For someone else it means growing a lot of their own food. It can look like keeping a slimmed down living space free of stuff and clutter or being really really selective when it comes to buying new things, questioning whether we can borrow it or find it used.  There are a billion different ways to enter into a relationship with voluntary simplicity.

Here at EM, Mike and I put a lot of effort into making our own lumber from trees on site, but we do not grow any of our food. We live an hour from the nearest town where most things can be found in terms of bigger stores and certain foods, but for us needing a vehicle is worth it for the opportunity to live where we do in the semi-remote woods. We all make our choices about how we want to live based on our highest held values and what’s most important to us.

Yesterday, on my way to Missoula to meet up with a friend, I had the pleasure of seeing our first baby spotted deer fawn of the year. We’ve had our eye out lately, as it’s a great joy of the heart to see them emerge every summer. It’s one of the many treats and gifts of living as we do, nested in nature and surrounded by thousands of acres of national forest. When I got home later on, it was the thing I was most excited to tell Mike about.

Life is too short and time too darn precious to not have space for the poetry of living. That’s my own take, anyway. I’d much rather be what other people call poor than to die with regrets of not having had time to fully live. I find it rather unfortunate that well-being of mind/body/heart and cultivating joy are way far down on the list of important matters in our mainstream society, if they’re even on the list at all. But we all have different values to consider too. It’s easy to think we all have the same values, but that isn’t true. To each their own, I say. It’s not a good idea to place ourselves above anyone else for any reason. We all make our choices.

Me. I want to live in such a way that prioritizes following my own heart. I want to practice in such a way that I stay on my own side of the fence and regard others with great kindness and genuine care. I want to live not from a place of obligation and uniformity, but with an aspiration to live free of labels and constrictions. To live in sincere contact and connection with others and the world, while investing in and strengthening my own individual personhood, with great joy and sovereignty. And a soft, tender, fierce and open heart.