Yurtal Film #1

Scattered Vampire With Mongolia Aspritation

Started 12/12/08

Okay, so maybe the title don't make any sense. Yet again, it might when I'm through. Today I went out and cleared icy snow off the top of the yurt with a snow removing device that sort of looks like a rake without tines. I don't know, I didn't really think the yurt was going to collapse, but in the weather we've been experiencing up here lately and last winter, anything could happen and it could happen right now.

Last week, for example we had an ice storm that took whole trees down at the rate of one per every five minutes. I'd driven up from the nearest town down the hill at 1 am. I couldn't make it all the way for this winter debacle had brought a power wire between me and two hundred yards from our driveway. I parked my car in the near driveway of our friendly neighbors and started the footwork toward home. The plow guy says, "watch out for the trees, one might fall on you". This seemed true enough, because every 3 seconds I heard crack and thwack and other stark sounds of nature dying. I weaved home out of the reach of any immediate trees. Lying warm in bed I heard trees cracking all night long and into the next morning. Could hardly sleep thinking this was sure gonna hurt somebody. It seemed pretty obvious that this was going to leave many people without electricity. For my in laws, this is not really a problem, since they have a well that overflows and two hearty wood stoves that can warm the house completely. They are in their seventies and they were not worried a bit, in fact, which is something I really dig about them. We lit candles the next night and read by little reading lights, played cards and visited friends, down the hill, where they had electricity.
I went out the next day to the yurt to see it still standing just fine. Actually my wife went out first and came back all happy that there was no obvious damage to the yurt. I sure was glad that I had cleared some of the trees directly behind the yurt last month. Nothing could fall right on top of the yurt. The ice had somewhat collected on the top, but once a fire was lit in there for a few hours this was not more of a problem than rain. Had I needed to wait for a day to do this I think everything would have been fine and most likely had I done nothing everything would have been fine. This is reassuring as full on winter approaches.

Last year, when we brought the yurt back from Montreal, I was anxious to put the thing up. I thought it simple since Yves had put his up by himself in one day. Whoa! Was I ever wrong. Well, it started out innocently enough. With some training, no doubt, I'd be able to figure it out by myself in a few days, however, it isn't about time, but what you do with it, to determine how easy life's gonna be for you. As in everything, nothing is truer. If you are someones grandparent this is a dam good sage advise line to slip to your eager grand kids, that is, if their not too soaked up in the video game. Anyway, we procured a hundred bales of hay and with our friend's help we formed a circle with it. The next week I bought some plywood to lay over the hay. I found some 2 X 12 s out in the field that weren't being eaten by carpenter ants or rotting in any other way, and put them to use with some plastic to create a moisture barrier between the hay and the plywood. When I went about putting this together, me with no carpentry skills what-so-ever, I found it hard to create the perfect circle with a 22' diameter surface. I don't know, maybe it is just me, but I couldn't get those materials to cooperate. Whenever Bev would come out to help, and I was angry she wasn't helping because she wanted to wait and do it the right way or at least somewhat the right way, I would tell her to get away, I don't need nobody's help and beat the hammer against my chest. Eventually, she stopped coming out to help and then avoided me all together which was the smart thing to do since I'd gone completely insane. I was becoming the daylight vampire who can't find the pure blood of a maiden. My eyes blood shot, I speak to no one. I sleep little, I eat some, I work on yurt project. Everyone looks strange to me. With the platform completed, I have to wait until the next weekend to begin putting up the yurt so I can have the help of friends if I need and maybe by then my wife would be speaking to me. Russ and Kelly whose driveway I parked my car in that ice storm night, slipped into my snare helping with getting the walls up and putting the ceiling poles in. I was really feeling bad for Russ when every ten seconds he was getting hit on the head by a pole. We should have worn hard hats. I kept saying he might suffer PTSD from it. No one got that or thought that was funny anyway. The hay bales are 2' high which make the top of the ceiling six and a half which was above our heads making it hard to do it from the outside. If we'd had a movable platform then we could have done it, I suppose, but the field is pretty lumpy. We did what we could, the wind was blowing and Russ pointed out that the pinwheel was not in line with where the poles were to go on cruxes in the walls. We finally had to give up for the day after a full, sun-up to sundown day. I could feel my head splitting open like a melon. It shouldn't be this hard, right? Well, there are a few crucial things to point out. One, we were not dealing with a level platform. It is hard to tell from any of our photos from the time, but the yurt went with this pretty drastic pitch of the field. Secondly, I had not made the platform large enough, or better, it wasn't the right shape so I was trying to fit a 22' diameter circle into an oval with the thinnest diameter being 20'. What a dumb ass right? So be it. The next weekend our friend Christopher and his mom came to help. I mention Christopher (above) because he's not only been a great help but was instrumental in finally getting the yurt up both times. He would see where things needed to be shifted, and he realized before I called Yves that the center poles needed to be lifted so that the yurt would not have a kind of torsion that made the door out of line with everything and was causing things to become impossible (I will go into this in further in future postings), and he also knew that even tension around the circle was necessary for a successful yurt. He has natural instincts for yurt construction. That Sunday evening, we had it up with the three layers of cover and ropes tightened around it. It was not perfect by any means and it made you feel like you were in a tilt-a-whirl, but it was standing and we could get some use out of it.

One thing to remember & you can pass this too onto a grandchild, we all swim in the same pool, some of us have teeth.

Canada, Mongolia & Other Destinations

If you are curious, the Groovy Yurts website is http://groovyyurts.com/ I would make this guy a fortune if I were so inclined, but ain't my forte. So we travelled up to Canada on a Friday and arrived in this rural village 30 minutes out of Montreal. It was becoming dusk. This tall rugby playing son of a Swiss lady greets us at the driveway. He plies us with brew and shows us the compound. In the yard he's just finished putting up a 19 footer. This is his demo version. We intend to sleep in it. He seems genuinely happy for that. On the grounds is an ancient looking board and concrete house, that is big thick boards squashing layers of concrete between them. Inside, he'd begun the remodeling project. It is what I imagine the rural french come lately would like with ample amount of natural patina. Bev & I both understand his love for the place though it was probably only somewhat inhabitable by harsh winter standards. Maybe the yurt might even stand up truer to that. Out at the end of the driveway stood a 25 foot high stone barn. Inside was like a treasure trove with hand carved chests, hand woven and dyed rugs and tapestries, all of an informal but supremely noble looking design. I imagined that in here is the handed down craft skill of an old and nomadic culture & you know it is not just imagination. Oh, and yes, the various ingredients for constructing a yurt was there too in droves. There were also beds, stoves and tables. This man, Yves, then showed us the yurt he had just finished putting up. Just before we had shown up he had shaved the plywood sticking out from the hay bails which were the foundation and floor insulation. He wasn't sure how the hay would stand up to years of weather, but it seemed like a suitable foundation, though the plywood was a bit squishy when you walked. We helped assemble a table for the stove to sit on and another table and tried putting together a few beds he pulled from his truck. They were untested and needed some work before being suitable for sleep. The general idea was that you could set up the inside of the yurt for easy comfort in under an hour. We then rushed off to the grocery store for food to prepare, wine and beer to tide us over until slumber. Yves treated us to a simple fish, cheese, salad and bread meal he prepared on the Mongolian cook stove which also heated the October night up inside. We also had store bought custard pie that brought my hungry wolf fangs down.

As we sat around drinking copious amounts of wine and beer, Yves told us of his initiation and encounters with Mongolians. I do believe he feels it a prerequisite to understand a little Mongolian culture to fully appreciate the bounty we were about to receive. His first foray into the steppe life of this ever ebullient and soulful culture was when he and a fellow adventure and philanthropist minded friend decided to drive from Switzerland to Mongolia with a truckload of school supplies. Yves told us that the Mongolian people could very well be 90% literate, as they do not have TV and the ills of consumer culture breaking down their doors like so many big bad wolves. By his description they also are not weighted down by and oppressive fundamental religion, they do thirst for knowledge. Now, it is true you can't generalize about a whole sector of people, but how Yves tells it, they are very clan oriented, and so make it there purpose to watch out for the whole. My little knowledge of that part of the world and how the Chinese and perhaps even Russian governments look upon nomadic people, not to mention Western society (for example, Berlusconi's draconian laws recently drawn up against the Roma population), wanting to displace them from anywhere they might want to settle, makes it hard for me to know for sure what it is like there. At this point it seems that a democracy has taken form in Mongolia, though the predominant Tibetan Buddhist religion would not bode well with a Chinese neighbor. Long distance horse racing seems to be a national craze. From what Yves told us about the families he stayed with, music and family with the love of jovial partying seem to be the past times. From our perspective the yurt is the optimal party hut. From their perspective, and I'm sure of this, it is home.
Well, anyway, we are hanging out in the yurt drinking, trying to break the language barrier, him speaking three or four languages us speaking one, of course, being American and all, when we got on to what Mongolians like to do after dark, beside the obvious adult activity of the boudoir.
Oops! There's no boudoir. A Mongolian family lives together in one studio apartment. So how do you riddle that one out little man? In Yves mind this is another reason the literacy rate is so high. More attention is giving to the child. Love making would more likely happen when there was event or reason for the children to be with relatives I suspect. The Mongolian nights are often clear, and in the winter, crisp. I imagine them taking advantage of the wood stove heat or an open fire, decked down with wool and fur, singing songs to keep the demons away. We too sang some songs that night. Well, Bev sang one of her songs and maybe I accompanied her, but Yves was coaxed into singing his Rugby songs at full volume and with much gusto. This guy is our kind-a peeps.

The next morning before we drove back to Western Massachusetts, passing through beautiful Lake Champlain, across Hero Island, we set up our yurt on the driveway, that is we set-up the door, walls, tono (center piece) with ceiling poles set in place. We did this in under an hour. The driveway was level and Yves is an expert at setting up yurts, but still, this was a remarkably short amount of time to see a dwelling go up. I only wish he could have been with us to set it up on our land.

In The Beginning As It Ever Was

This is our yurt. What you might not be able to tell by looking at this photo is that there is a fire built in a box stove inside and that it is beginning to snow on, this, one of the last days of November. It looks to be twilight here but is, in fact, early afternoon. I'm around somewhere loading brush onto a cart & hauling it over to a stick pile. On Christmas Eve I plan to torch that pile. I've been building this pile for about a month, month and a half. What I usually do is build a fire in the stove which either goes extremely smoothly or I curse at the the fire until tears well in my eyes mostly from the smoke coming from the fire-less sticks. But I never say screw it, I keep trying until the warm glow of flames gives me confidence that I can leave well enough alone, then I bumble out of the yurt and start up the tractor and start loading the cart with sticks.

In the beginning, before this yurt, there was talk of a yurt. It started with our friend Desi. She wanted to buy a yurt together, a bunch of us. We were drunk and had thought that we might. It was going to be smaller than this, I think, and used for hanging out. It would reside at her house...in her front yard. The idea was dropped because it would take an investment from a bunch of us, and probably only be utilized by one of us, that is, after the honeymoon. Bev and I thought it would be good if we had a yurt. Well...Bev thought so, but I was still unsure. The truth is I was really against it at first, the investment being great and the thing would mostly end up a disaster. To be frank, up until this point I've been the kind of person, like a child who has many possessions, and loses interest far before they are worn out. When I did become intrigued, after hearing that people actually live in these things year round, I thought maybe this would be the solution to rent, I not liking to pay it.

We were not thinking sensibly, or I should say I wasn't when the opportunity to possibly rent one came to pass. This chick up in Vermont appeared to be in a fix, having to move a two-story art project of a yurt from a flood plain by order of FIMA or get charged something like a hundred bucks a day or something if she didn't. Well Bev & I mistook her for a hippy & a reasonable one at that & decided to help her out if we could. She wanted to draw up a contract and all that & did, but we didn't want to sign it when she didn't want negotiate what she didn't want to negotiate and well the whole thing took one long drip into a fiasco where she wanted to sue us & we were like "for what?" She had our guts all up in a dish rag twirl. We hardly ever go to Brattleboro any more because the whole affair was so unpleasant. I really thought then the whole yurt idea was being flushed down the toilet, but, you see, we have this land my wife inherited & well, it needed some company, I guess. Now this is where the story gets twirling in the fingers of a new dawning. My gal likes to look at old houses and old cars on the internet. In fact, she likes old artifacts, much if not all of which we can't afford. In her search for the unfordable she stumbled on the Groovy Yurts guy. He had these yurts up on a website that were imported from Mongolia. They were hand made and hard not to look at. I was being squeezed back into the tube. The cost was beyond our means, but somehow he made a deal with my wife and in October last year we were on our way to the country side outside of Montreal.

Yurt Back Up

I am lazy no doubt, but also you most know that I don't have internet at home living up in the country, though they might be putting those lines in. Anyway, my cell phone works in the yurt. Oh yes, the yurt is back up, but Yves, who sold us the yurt & came for a visit said it was not a Mongolian yurt anymore, because we made it taller, so it has a different shape. He said it will probably be good for snow being removed from the roof. He shooks his head walking up into the field. He told BD that we'd done something here. He said he thought it was sturdy, but said we should tighten the top outside rope to keep it so. He also said he would come and help us if it were to fall again. We had a great crew of friends to help us. There were about 12 of us on a Saturday about a month ago. Pictures will be coming soon.

Dollop of Mayo

Last Friday, there was terrific wind up in the field with the yurt barely holding it's rain jacket on. The few days before I'd noticed the yurt leaning a little more forward toward the door. I kept trying to square the door and had a sneaky suspicion that the whole thing was creeping forward with the lean. I went out on this windy day and pulled the canvas back together in the back & pulled the ropes tighter. I then went to pick Bev up and bring her home. When we arrived back home an hour later we immediately noticed something peculiar about the yurt. It looked kind of like a dollop of mayo on a crust of green bread. The stove pipe had come out the top and it looked like the old man had given up. The door was pitched forward so that it was nearly impossible to enter and it seemed dangerous to do so, but we needed to pull the stove pipe out before taking the jacket and felt off. We were able to pull the jacket and felt off with out it completely toppling over. Then we took the rest of it down with the the new intention of leveling the platform and trying again. I WILL SAY THIS ABOUT YURT BUILDING: A LEVEL PLATFORM MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!

The next day was bitter cold but we went out and did our best to level the platform by jacking up the side that was low and then see if we could test it for being level. It seemed to kind of work, the platform now sort of taking on a teacup shape. We didn't have help putting up the yurt, so I went in to take my depression nap. That night, I was feeling really down about the situation, but the next morning was sunny and relatively warm, so we decided to try to put it up just ourselves, Bev's dad helping with the tono part. I worked all day to try and get the wall shape right and lay the poles in. The platform still was not making it easy and at sunset I gave up but had made some progress. The next day I saw that if I lined the back up so that all the poles were in line with there corresponding holes and the wall was even height all the way around then I had more success putting the poles in and having them stay in, though I didn't have as much time or stamina on this day or patience, so I worked my patience to the end and then went and did something else for a while. We had a plan to have our friend Christopher help us on the next afternoon with the canvas and tarp part, but the next morning it was snowing so I decided to take it down again and this time store it in the barn. Now we have decided to build a proper platform that will be both level and constructed to last. We are also going to move the operation to most level part of the field. Stay tuned......

What it is & how we deal with it.

A Yurt is a portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. The word yurt is originally from the Turkic word meaning "dwelling place" in the sense of "homeland"; the term came to be used in reference to the physical tent-like structures only in other languages. In Mongolian it is called a ger (гэр). Afghans and Pakistanis call them "Kherga"/"Jirga" or "ooee".

The yurt consists of a circular wooden frame carrying a felt cover. The felt is made from the wool of the flocks of sheep that accompany the pastoralists. The timber to make the external structure is not to be found on the treeless steppes, and must be traded for in the valleys below.
The frame consists of one or more lattice wall-sections, a door-frame, roof poles and a crown. Some styles of yurt have one or more columns to support the crown. The (self-supporting) wood frame is covered with pieces of felt. Depending on availability, the felt is additionally covered with canvas and/or sun-covers. The frame is held together with one or more ropes or ribbons. The structure is kept under compression by the weight of the covers, sometimes supplemented by a heavy weight hung from the center of the roof. They vary regionally, with straight or bent roof-poles, different sizes, and relative weight.
It is designed to be dismantled and the parts carried on camels or yaks to be rebuilt on another site.

We don't have camels or yaks, so we used a big blue pick-up truck to help carry our yurt into our field. The picture above looks similar to ours and pictures of ours are coming soon. Bev & I joke all the time that we wish we had a Mongolian if only to show us the ropes.

A month ago we travelled up near Montreal to purchase a yurt from a nice man. He is not Mongolian, but Swiss. He has obviously some affinity with Mongolians as he was many yurts. He calls them yurts and not gers or whatever wickepedia says, we are going with yurt because we are probably closer to Swiss than Mongolian, but who knows, maybe soon we will feel very Mongolian.

In this post, I am going to work backward from today in explaining our travails:

Today I woke around 6:45 am as I do most days. Bev was up around 7am & on her way to work by 7:30 am as she usually is with her mom who is also on her way to work. We are living in the sturdy farm house belonging to her parents. Her dad, George, built this house after the house Bev came home as baby to burned down from a chimney fire. A year later, this new house existed. At first we were reluctant to move in with her parents, but since George was giving us the second field, a beautiful piece of farmland with woods, it seemed more practical than paying rent forever. Anyhow, I got Emory off to the bus for school after we both scarfed down some oatmeal. I lit a fire in the kitchen wood burning stove with the intention of baking some pumpkin bread and headed off to drop George off at his friend's woodlot to to pick up the big green International filled with what he called bone dry wood. Early this morning, another truck pulled up with a cord of ash intended for the house stoves. I got back to the farm around 9:30, stoked the kitchen fire and went out to take wood up to the yurt. I've lit a fire in the yurt stove almost every cold day and for sure every rainy day. I carry the wood that's been drying in the basement of the house out to the yurt in a red wheelbarrow. It reminds me of the WCW's poem because it is red & there is some simplicity in the futility of my act and so much depends upon it (like writing poems I suppose). I fill the the wood box, that is really a grain box, that is supposed to be weatherized but still allows some rain to get in. The wheelbarrow fits three armfulls of wood & the box fits three wheelbarrows (of wood). The first time out today I start a fire in the box stove, one of the many gifts from George. It is a box stove made in Bangor, Maine which burns hot and has a top loading system that makes it easy to tend. It ain't easy starting a fire when it is cold and damp from the frost but if you got a half hour and a taste for wood smoke, this stove will start up and how. Soon the smoke is billowing out of the the stove pipe that extends some four feet at an angle with the door above the yurt. I stand back from the yurt and watch it for a few minutes, admiring the slope of the yurt with the field. The door is splayed outward when open and leads onto ramp steps that I put together the first week. With the door open the yurt looks like a cartoon drawing of the face of a dopey kid. Now I wish I'd taken more time to consider the benefits of having a level platform for the yurt to sit on. The cold sweat of irritation hits me for the first time today. It takes me back to all the things I've ever done the wrong way. Still the yurt is standing & will probably stay standing where it is until the spring when we can take our time and build a proper platform. How I wish I had a Mongolian. They aren't Oompa Loompas, however, so maybe I need to stop being snotty American dude and roll with the slouches. I also see the beauty of it. It is made of fabric and beautifully painted wood & if I wanted to take it down it would take but a few hours. There is a problem, though, where to store it if we need to take it down.

After noon, I go to pick Bev up from work after taking the pumkin bread out slightly burned on the top. I'm feeling a bit down in the dumps. I got the yurt blues no doubt. Each day I work a little on the yurt to improve the situation. I didn't inheret this situation but created it, so I suppose that's what's got me down. Yesterday I spent my morning locating the leaks and drying out the rugs. It wasn't so bad, not as many leaks as the last time. The water comes in mostly where the platform extends off of what I call the back side, that is opposite the door. Because the platform is not flush with the yurt, water collects and then finds its way in. I use little woven rugs to sop it up and then dry them on the stove. I tried drying a bigger Navaho-style rug on the stove and burnt a big hole in it. Yes, I am am turning into a stooge. Perhaps, I've always been. That rug now serves as more weather proofing for the wood box. The day before yesterday, I just built a fire in the stove. It was the second fire since installing the box stove, still trying to burn off the paint fumes, so I can't stay in the yurt but go back and forth from the house with wood to keep the fire hot. On Sunday we took out the stove we borrowed from Bev's parents and replaced it with our freshly painted stove. This went easier than expected, we just had to install a little more pipe and switch out stoves. Bev's mom (also Beverly) came out to the yurt for the first time since it's been all set up. She likes it's cosiness and was generally impressed. On Friday I finished painting the floor an orange that matches some of the exterior ribbon. The floor paint made it more comfortable than having it unpainted. Bev says that it makes her feel better about the yurt which was causing some arguments between us. She believes, and I suppose rightly so, that I rushed to put it up, when I was sort of driven to see it standing and not have it take up space in the barn (which is falling down) and Emory's room where the felt was always in danger of cats pissing on it. I also was very stubborn about doing it my way or my interpretation of how it should be done instead of listening to Bev's suggestions. Anyone knowing me will not be surprised. We came to an agreement that it is what is and and when we can make improvements we shall.

The day that I was most frustrated, aside from the days I spent trying to put it up myself with evening help from Bev & my close friends who could see, no doubt, that I was at a loss on how to solve the platform problem but plowing ahead blindly, was a gusty day. Often times that day in the wind the yurt took on the look of a weather balloon. I spent the entire morning trying to keep the rain jacket on it. Everywhere I could see the felt exposed and gaps where rain could make its way inside. When I'd go to the back to snug it up the front side would come untucked from the ropes and when I went around front, the back side would come untucked from where I just tucked. Then the flap that covers the center piece (called a tonol) was flapping like exaggerated bat wings and one of the ropes you use to tie it down broke free from it and needed either to be pinned, or better, sewn back on. I could only find safety pins which worked temporarily until I was able to buy some baby diaper safety pins, which worked much better. I would throw the rope down over the side of the yurt and run frantically out the door and around to try and grab it before the wind blew the whole thing back over the other side like a toupee. This comedy of frustration repeated itself near a hundred times until mother nature decided to quit fucking with me. Later that afternoon the winds died down and Bev & I were able tighten all the ropes. Since then the top piece has stayed put pretty nicely, though we still find ourselves snugging the as it seems to want to come untucked in big wind.

My best times in the yurt have been building a fire and listening to records on my portable record player or the radio while sipping tea or beer depending on the hour of the day. The very best time was on the weekend of my birthday when my good friends all came up to celebrate and we played our brand of caterwauling and ended the weekend with inspired laughter. George was happy to see that I had such a good time after so much frustration putting the damned thing up. More on that subject in the near future.