The Bridge

This is Coleman Barks speaking at the opening 1st chapter of his book The Soul of Rumi:

“In the early 1990s-it was December-I was sitting in meditation under the green dome that houses Rumi’s tomb in Konya. Some one came up and gave me a green shawl. As you might imagine, I treasure it still and use it in my meditation. I love the wrapped, rapt feeling.

Going in, feeling the limpid contentment in being oneself and the endless discovery there: the green shawl is that, reminiscent of a child’s tent-making delight, the rainy-day times when you spread a sheet over a card table and chair, anchored it with safety pins, and crept under the shelter where imagination could flower. How we forget this tent making for such long spans is a mystery in itself.”Our summer of tent making has come to an end, and the reality of an approaching winter is now very much reality. One last bit of construction we wanted to share with every one is the addition of our connecting deck between our yurts, or our Bridge as we have started to call it. I had not considered what an important role it would play, but it came out nicely, and I can see now how much it will contribute greatly to our home.

There is of course still much more to do and projects will continue through out the winter, but a lot of energy was used up this summer and I can feel the need for a little slowing down, to focus more on maintaining our selves nicely through out the winter and regroup to the necessities that are still needed. The summer was wonderful, to build a home is incredible, to have a taste of growing strong in body and sharp in mind is remembered as a kind of birthright I hope every one gets to experience in their own way, and pray will return to me as often as possible through out this life. There is more to do, maybe in any good adventure there always will be and that’s OK because it has been a very good adventure. At times it seems a little crazy to have made a home of tents, I am glad in reading from Coleman Barks that we are not alone in such a longing.

Round...and Round

Done… well its true that there is plenty more to do, but as this is one of those "it’s the journey not the destination" home building adventures, “more to do” is normal, and milestones are to be celebrated. So as of yesterday afternoon our second yurt is up with as far as the yurt itself is concerned nothing left to do. Yahooooo! somebody get me my yak butter and felt hat, I'm home.
The new yurt will be our daytime space with lots of big windows, tall walls, and high ceiling, housing our kitchen and dinning table/ living room. The used yurt will be for sleeping, more den like, its smaller size is appropriate as a nighttime or quite time space. It will be bedroom and office. If any one out there is interested in the differences we have seen between Rainier and Pacific yurts please contact us. I really have nothing bad to say about either. A comparison would have the usual plus and minus, but they are both wonderfully crafted yurts.
In the “more to do” categories there are many of those. A connecting deck between the yurts is a priority. Winter heating is on the top of the list, a sink that drains, and non-extension cord based electricity. We have been checking out this very cute mini wood stoves for sail boats. Which say they can heat 300+ square feet. We have yet to commit to a purchase but if your interested check them out at: http://www.marinestove.com/index.htm, cute, cute, and cute.

There are those rare moments in my life when I’ve stepped back and been truly amazed at some course of personal action, a “holy crap!” exhalation is made and for a moment the universe is pretty darn cool place to be in. When I step back and look at these yurts and the idea to make a home out of them I feel this summer’s yurt building experience fall easily into that list of rarities, and the universe is feeling pretty darn cool.

In every Yurt raising...

...a little rain must fall. Well, the other round in Round and Round is up. But not with out some good lesson's in patience, exhaustion, and weather prediction. With rain scattered through out the last two week we have had to run between getting as much done as we can, then scramble to protect our work against rain. But its up and its a beautiful addition to our home. Cindy and John gave us there left over Trex decking so we should be able to get the connecting deck up between the yurts very soon.

Do as you do

Well the summer is winding its way towards fall, its been a wonderful several months for us. We built our first yurt with another to go. Chloe is about to turn three (August 19th). Esmé is sitting up and is moving across the floor with what I would call more of a drag then a crawl but it seems to be just as effective.



Although the vision of our two yurts will not be complete until the end of August, the sense of “home” is well established. Between my jobs I have found I can bike every where I need to go and its been a great introduction to the surroundings. There is a lot of growth in the area but still many old farm houses, pastures with cows and horses, barking dogs, and old trucks. From my job with goats I have grown to recognize their particular smell, which I now find along my bike rides, and know that there must be goats not to far off.


The pictures included represent some of the last two weeks of building, the sense of summers end is pushing us forward with the second yurt. Next weekend should be the bamboo floors, with the yurt going up soon after. From then on all our priorities will revolve around preparations for fall. Evaluate our heating, establish drainage for a kitchen sink, build the covered deck to connect the yurts, take a better look at our electrical needs. It is fun to think about the winter, we had a good thunder storm several weeks back and it did feel a little more dramatic in our canvas castle.

No going back

Over the last few days it starting to feel like the move is official. The yurt is set up to accommodate us until the second one is built. What we don't need or can not find is stored in the loft of the barn. All of us in 315 square ft is going pretty well, we have a nice kitchen set up, with a small refrigerator, electric hot plate and microwave. Our Ikea shelves have created a nice sleeping area, and there is still room for a table, couch, and little office. Our compost toilet is currently set up outside the yurt, but is working very well and I think will be fine to have inside a yurt once space allows for it (see http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html).

Angi has gotten a membership at a local gym which is also providing her with a shower, the girls and I are perfecting the sponge bath. Our indoor kerosene heater is working well to take off the morning chill, but we'll be investigating other heating sources through out the summer. This weekend we'll start work on our landscaping to create points of landscaping that will allow us to safely and responsibly empty our laundry water. We'll dig 10" basins several feet wider then any of our planting, then pile dirt into islands where plants are to go, then fill in the basin with mulch. Draining our greywater under the mulch. At the moment we'll create four points a center island of shrubs and grasses in front of the yurts, two fruit trees, and a some bamboo (see http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/). I have the hope of setting up a wood fired bath in the near future using a Japanese wood stove hot water heater and a stock tank.

Angi had gotten a garden started while the yurt was being built and its now looking really good. Collards, corn, beans, radishes, and carrots. Last night we had our first fire in a fire pit provided from John and Cindy made up of an old truck tire rim. It worked really well and we had a beautiful evening.

Angi has been working part time with her work as a therapist, and I have been asked to start next Thursday as a substitute custodian with the school district. I will also will go visit a local goat dairy farm this weekend that needs some one to give their barn a daily cleaning. It would be just a couple hours of work, but might round things out with the substitute work. The girls are awesome. Chloe is so far loving it here. With room to run, a grandpa to go visit, a big red barn, bugs, dirt, bats, barn cat, birds, snakes, creek, cherry tree, and strawberries. Esmé is the most darling baby on this side of the universe, and seems to be handling all of this very patiently with a calm that seems to say she is ok with it. It is strange to think that Chloe may have a few half memories of her first few years in Seattle, For Esmé it will be this yurt and property.

Yurt sweet yurt

Wow, what a couple of days. We had put our bets on this weekend’s weather report and came up with more then enough sun and dry weather to get our first yurt up. The how-to instructions were well detailed. But as first time yurt builders it was not with out its bumps and bruises and twist and turns.

The first part went smoothly with Angi and I getting up the doors and walls. Angi’s brother Jeffery and neighbors showed up just in time to assist with getting the roof crown and rafters up. A process that started out a little precarious and resulted in Jeffery volunteering for the yurts sacrificial bloodletting, when one of the initial rafters fell out hitting him squarely on the head, thank fully he was not seriously hurt. So with the yurt rafter installation lesson learned, we proceeded cautiously and soon completed the yurts wooden frame.

Which lead us to the outer layers of the inner lining, insulation, and canvas for the walls, and vinyl roof. A tricky process, as the fabric pieces were large and required careful arrangement over the whole structure. Which like a lot of what we have accomplished so far, the longer you look at it the more it makes sense as to how to proceed.

Finally came the plexiglas dome, on a ladder tall enough that I could stand up within the center crown, I threw a rope down to Angi who tied it off to the dome and then we slide it up the roof and then secured it to the crown.

Our Flickr page has a lot of photos from the two days effort.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/angimarkchloe/2579720414/

Waiting, waiting, waiting....

Right now we are pretty much ready to put up the yurt. We are just waiting for some sunny weather. Well, it doesn't even have to be sunny, we just need a day without rain. Each night I have been going to bed setting positive thoughts on a rainless day! Almanac.com says Snohomish can expect sun on Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week.

Roof cleaning

Along with the floors Angi started to give the roof a cleaning, with its size and weight its a little akward, we'll be looking for some sunny days this coming week to get it clean and dry.

Bamboo floors

With a big push this weekend the bamboo flooring was installed, with a lot of help for Angi’s brother and Dad. The flooring is beautiful, but they really great part is that we are now in the position to put up our first yurt. Which weather permitting might happen as early as this coming weekend.

A floor!!!

With a lot of help from Jeff, Matt, and Michael, thank you

Refinishing the doors

Yurt pickup

Friday we went to pick up our new yurt, at Rainier Yurt’s. The girls stayed with grandma, and Angi and I had a great day picking up part II of our dream of home. The Ryder truck was big, bumpy, and loud. Angi did a great job driving it.

If you have built castles in the air...

...your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

Progress with our first deck has gone really well; a lot has been learned, with a lot more learning to come. We’re getting close to a point where we will have material sitting on the deck we will not want to allow to get wet, which will mean there will have to be a big push towards getting the yurt up at a good pace.
The next steps will be finish up what little framing there is, complete the refinishing of the doors, attach the tongue and groove plywood, install the bamboo wood flooring, put up the yurt.

1000 sq ft of silver bubble wrap

The yurts are insulated with Reflective Insulation, which to my untrained eye looks a lot like bubble wrap covered in tin foil. Invented by NASA, I’ve been told works like a coffee thermos. Since we’re trusting our well being to its insulating abilities in our walls and ceiling, we thought to trust it to our floor. I found a manufacture online who sold it in 4'x125' ft rolls we need 655 sq ft, so this week we received our order of two rolls, 1000 sq ft of silver bubble wrap.

The Vision

Two yurts have been purchased, our first is on order and is currently being built by a local company called Rainier Yurts. The yurt is 21ft. in diameter, 338 square ft., with two doors and four windows, the walls are 7’x4” high with the center dome sitting at 13’. It will be ready for us to pick up May 21st.

Our second yurt was purchased two weeks ago from the Springmeyer family who had owned it for the past five years. It is a Pacific Yurt, a 25 year old company in Oregon. It is 20ft. in diameter, 314 square ft., with two doors and four windows. the walls are 6’ high with the center dome sitting at 10’.

The new yurt will be meant for our cooking and living room space, and the used yurt for sleeping, bathing, and toilet. Our vision is to set both yurts along side each other, eventually building a covered deck to connect them.

I have been trying to think of names for the yurts in part because yurt's make me think of sailboats, designed to be moved, with a pleasing wooden frame, surrounded by huge sheets of canvas, also because I dislike saying yurt 1 and yurt 2. Today I asked Angi if she liked Fajr and Isha. In honor of our good friend Jill who just recently departed to the East Coast. Fajr is the dawn prayer of Muslims, the first of five completed through out a day, which seems fitting with the new yurts use as our daytime space. Isha is the evening prayer, the last of the five, appropriate to the older yurts role as bedroom.

* A Jill story
Jill introduced herself to me one day when I was working at the espresso cart on Seattle University. She said “Excuse me but what’s your heritage? I said my mom’s Mexican and my dads of British decent. She said oh! I was just wondering what it took to make some one so damn cute” She never paid for a cup of coffee, and I had a wonderful friend for many years to come. Thank you Jill your very missed.

A what?

The first yurts have been traced back to the time of Genghis Khan. Marco Polo, observing the nomadic people of Mongolia, noticed their sturdy, exactly-round tents made of rods, covered with felt, which they carried with them on carts. Yurts (or gers, as they are called in Asia), are still used today throughout parts of Russia, Mongolia and Siberia.

The traditional yurt walls were made of slats lashed together with leather thongs to form a collapsible trellis or lattice. The lattice was set up in a circle and the door frame was lashed into place. The crown or center ring was set on two posts in the center of the yurt. Roof poles connected to the crown and rested on the top of the lattice, all the way around. Finally, the entire lattice is bound by a tension rope. Covers for yurts in Mongolia were constructed of felt, beaten soft by rolling and kicking the wet sheep fleece. The size of the flock ultimately dictating the size of the yurt. In cold climates, up to six layers were used for insulation.

As a modern structure, yurts are made using hi-tech materials. They are highly engineered and built for extreme weather conditions. And although it is true that they can be dismantled and moved, they are far from the nomadic structures of central Asia’s history. With many being built with elaborate decks, floors, interiors, kitchens, and bathrooms.

1st yurt arrival

Not exactly what Marco Polo saw as he witnessed yurts being transported in central Asia, but probably as close as you’ll get in 2008, in the Americas Pacific Northwest. Thank you John and Cindy