Breaking the Door Knob

A Roundabout Path

“Bold move, Samantha, bold move,” Momma said. I had spent the previous year abroad and the plan (or lack thereof) for what was next was yet another non-sequitur. My life wasn’t stacking up in a sensible way for those who cared about me.

Except for Zach. My new buddy was my wings and I was fearless, as we aimed our life out west, taking our time wandering towards our new perfect hometown that we thought was out there somewhere, in Utah or Oregon or Washington someplace, with a sweet little cabin in the woods and nice folks who wanted to be our friends.

We never found our perfect hometown on that trip. We stayed where we ran out of money, and the place we fell became our perfect hometown over the next several years. And we never found our cabin in the woods, we built it. And instead of a cabin in the woods, it was a yurt in the desert.

Breaking the Door Knob

The day Zach and I fell in love, we remember talking tiny house plans for a while. Now the time had come to make a bold move together, but we didn’t feel we had the time or resources to make that happen. We looked into buying a camper trailer and fixing it up to live in, however, after we went to go see a potential purchase, we left with a new sense of clarity. The couple had made a beautiful, cozy little home out of a camper and were selling for just $11,000. But we felt it was just too much old equipment that we didn’t know how to use or care for. It just didn’t feel right.

On the drive home I looked out the window at the shades of the desert: muted grey juniper and sage and pale brown sand. My eyes had not yet adjusted to accept vibrant color variations of this alien landscape. Our life took a fork in the road right there in a moment as Zach remembered, “What about a yurt?”

We had found refuge many nights for just $40 in these cozy 14ft. diameter yurts with a double bunk bed, futon and space heater in parks all along the Northwest segment of our journey, and one night in particular left us with an impression of yurts we would never forget.

These stays were such a luxury during our time on the road, we would stay up late enjoying the space and each other’s company. One cold, clear night in the Washington Cascades in mid-November, we stepped out of our yurt rental for a moment into the cold clear evening. Momentary enjoyment slowly turned to dread when we were denied entry by a static doorknob, locked from the inside.

The gravity of the situation set in very slowly, as we began to examine the yurt from different angles, thinking something along the lines of “Isn’t this just a big tent? There must be a way in.” No time like 2:00 a.m. to stop and study an unfamiliar structure. With phone, keys and even our warm coats inside, a couple of knuckleheads like us just got really damn lucky, because as we were crossing the check-in station after looking for a phone, the campground host pulled up. He had to help us break the lock.

This was the moment we both flashed back to while driving home from the camper idea.

When we got home that day, we embarked on the thrill of a new search. At that time, we found very little info about living in a modern yurt. Although this may not still be the case, we said that if we made it through this process, we would share our experience with others. After another couple months of learning about the modern yurt and pricing it out, we were ready to build our first home.

Through Craigslist, good faith and better luck, we met an amazing family who agreed to host us on their land, and so we took the leap and began our journey with a modern yurt. Our yurt has lived in three places in four years, and we feel that each time it moves, it fulfills its purpose as a nomadic dwelling. We are enjoying where we are now, while musing what its next home might be.