Empty Mountain

04/25/2026

Yesterday after dinner we took a drive further up the gravel road we live off of. We so enjoy watching how the landscape shifts and changes around our neck of the woods. Living in such a dynamic state temperature & weather wise I feel is very good practice for learning certain very beneficial life lessons. We feel lucky to live here. Montana is so very beautiful.

Some pics from our drive & walkabout when we got to the end of our road a few miles up:

04/25/2026

New EM blog post:

Warm sun makes me want to sing like a songbird. Snow makes me want to eat & sleep like a bear. On Tuesday this past week, it was 76-degrees F (24 C) with full sun and clear blue skies. On Wednesday it rained literally all day and we collected a total of .71 inches in our rain gauge. W

04/25/2026

We found these lovelies today. Glacier lilies & trillium.

04/23/2026

On Tuesday it was 76 degrees with full sun. On Wednesday it rained literally all day and we clocked .71 inches in our rain gauge. And right now today looks like this:

04/23/2026

Today we've had all the weather: rain, sun & now snow. In other words: it's springtime in Montana!

Mike's mom and her friend visited us here at EM and she took these lovely photos yesterday & today:

04/22/2026

New blog post:

I’m pretty sure I will keep using this blog post title at least once a year. Because, well, water is life. Sometimes a gal just needs to call a thing what it is. We are more acutely aware of the reality of how water is life living how we do, off-grid and without running water amid the woods of t

04/21/2026

As any home owner or land owner knows, sometimes when you think you're starting one project another one presents itself that needs tending to first and you find yourself doing an entirely different project that needs doing that you didn't anticipate.

Such was the case for Mike yesterday when he started prepping the ground next to the sauna building in order to create platforms to put our new rain water catchment cubes on. A big tree stump emerged and he spent most of yesterday digging it up and today he chainsawed it out. Progress!

04/20/2026

New video upload:

Springtime in the Woods

04/20/2026

To listen to the joint talk Mike & I gave yesterday during the Morning of Mindfulness we hosted in Missoula, see here:

Recorded on Sunday April 19, 2026 during a Morning of Mindfulness in Missoula.

04/14/2026

New EM video:

Recorded on April 10.

04/13/2026

We hope to see you on Sunday for our morning of mindfulness in Missoula from 10am-noon. Folks are welcome to simply show on up but registration is kindly requested:

Join us for a morning of mindfulness in Missoula on Sunday April 19 from 10-noon, hosted by Empty Mountain.

04/10/2026

Yesterday we purchased and brought home 2 used water cubes to up our rain catchment capacity. Mike drove a ways to fetch them but they were being sold for a good price and were in really good condition. Each cube is 275 gallons, for a total of 550 gallons.

With our current system, which we've been operating on now for a couple of years, we have the capacity to store up to 165 gallons of rain water. So once we gutter up the new sauna building and hook up the new cubes we'll be making a big leap in the amount of water we can gather up. The plan is also to try insulating the cubes so we can potentially store water in them through the winter.

Thus far we've only been using rain water for washing hands & dishes and showering, but once we start collecting more our plan is to filter it for drinking & cooking so we can potentially stop hauling potable water from town.