This is a yurt we have on our property. It’s in the woods maybe 400 feet uphill from our home. No water but it’s got electricity on a pole. Whatever brilliant reason we had for putting it up there 15 years ago has long escaped my memory. Over time it’s been occupied by a succession of young, brave, artistic types who’ve exchanged some manual labor and pet sitting for a free, if rustic, place to store their stuff. I’d say “place to live” except invariably as soon of they’d stored all their stuff and spent a few days there they find a boyfriend or girlfriend in town and spend most of their time there. So it’s been kind of a giant closet in the woods. I should clarify that there is a bath house down the hill, so they always had access to indoor plumbing and a hot shower, but by and large they all left me to wonder if it’s a rhetorical truism to ask, “Do tenants shit in the woods?”
Anyway, it went empty again this summer and I finally decided that it would be better to use it myself than look for another person who would want to trade free storage for never being around. So I’m in the process of converting it into a gallery space to display some of my art and to serve as the founding headquarters of Bourbon, Dogs and Art.
These days I’m cleaning on the outside and cleaning on the inside and trying to get it ready for the Alamance County artist studio tour. Yurts can get a bit grungy on the outside over time, especially deep in the woods, but yurt interiors are always cool.
Let us not forget that the intrepid Jody Cedzidlo lived in that yurt, winter and summer, for a year and a half while she was in art school. She’s no slouch. Look for her design company, Flytrap, on Facebook.
Thanks, Linda! Oooooh, and I *did* shit in the woods. Not all the time, mind you, but there were definitely occasions when the 400 feet seemed all too many. Also–the heated bathhouse was an excellent respite from the cold, so I used to surf the internet while I sat on the toilet, not shitting. Just to point out the irony and all.
Hey Jody – Didn’t mean to besmirch your bravery in my poetic retelling of the past, but it’s definitely a fact that you were the only tenant that ever took advantage of the free wifi. (Kids these days, snort.)
Ha! I know–I was absolutely spoiled, and I am not being sarcastic at all! I STILL try to recreate the meal Linda made me for my 23rd birthday, to no avail, and still whine at having to pay, now, for rent and internet.
Plus, at parties, I can always tell about the time you guys went out of town and left me 50-60 habanero peppers and how I, the very portrait of naive enthusiasm, cut them all up and sauteed them, inside the yurt, on my propane stove. Yeah. I definitely slept in your trailer that night.