By ANN ALLEN
Indiana Correspondent NORTH MANCHESTER, Ind. — Brian Kruschwitz and his wife, LuAnne Harley, agree that living in a yurt in the middle of the country was a wise choice for them and their two young sons – but they acknowledge it isn’t for everyone.
“You have to like the outdoors and simplicity,” Brian said.
LuAnne quickly agreed. “And you have to be organized. For a family of four to live together peacefully in a 700-square-foot area, there has to be a place for everything and everything in its place.”
As far as they are concerned, the benefits outweigh any drawbacks. “We are more in tune with nature,” she said. “We hear sounds we’d normally have to be outside to hear, liking leaves falling, ice crunching, bird calls. Our home is easy maintenance. Instead of painting it, we just wash it off with a garden hose.”
Described as a cross between a geodesic dome and a luxury safari tent, modern yurts, unlike their predecessors in Mongolia and Siberia, have become portable shelters of choice for many. Most owners use them for workshops, artist studios or guest suites.
The couple know of no one else in the area, or possibly the state, however, who lives year-round in what can only be described as a tent built on a circular wooden frame. Their yurt has a wood lattice exterior wall that unfolds like an accordion. Their roof looks like the underside of an umbrella, with rafters forming a cone-shaped frame topped by a Plexiglas skylight.
Insulated with a NASA-created Mylar and bubble wrap material, it is heated in the winter by an efficient wood-burning stove and cooled in the summer by cross currents through its several windows. “It never gets hotter inside than it is outside,” the couple said.
Rounding out the amenities are a framed-in entry door, bathroom, modern kitchen and a loft that provides sleeping quarters for four – a queen-sized bed for the parents and a double bed for sons Harley, 7, and Owen, 4. Guests sleep on a futon on the lower level. In the event of dinner parties, their table stretches nicely across the yurt to provide ample seating.
Harley and Owen are home-schooled, working in a tidy study area beneath the loft. Window shades double as pull-down maps.
Before nesting into their yurt, Brian and LuAnne were not ready to build a house, but looking for alternatives. They considered a trailer, but the idea of a yurt continued to have appeal.
They asked Pacific Yurts of Cottage Grove, Ore., about a used yurt and learned the company did not deal in used equipment. Company employees knew of a couple in the state of Washington, however, who had lived in a yurt while building their straw house, who might want to sell their temporary dwelling.
The Hoosier couple sent Brian’s parents, who live in the Northwest, to look at the yurt; they liked it. LuAnne and Brian quickly joined them in Ellensburg, Wash., where they met the previous owners, a pair of professors who lived in the yurt for four years.
“Living in a yurt brought us back to what it feels like to be human and connected to our family and to our world,” one of the previous owners had said.
That told LuAnne they were not buying someone else’s home, they were buying a yurt. “There’s a big difference,” she said.
“By meeting the couple and helping dismantle the yurt, we learned how to put it back up,” Brian said.
Their slightly used home – framework, canvas, windows, stove, wiring and even the kitchen cupboards – fit into a 24-foot rental truck with room to spare. Since Brian had already built the yurt’s base and subfloor, it was possible to erect the yurt’s walls and ceiling in a day. Adding the loft, kitchen, bathroom and built-ins took longer.
“I miss having space for all my music instruments,” Brian said, “but otherwise, I like this lifestyle just fine.”
Traveling musicians, the bilingual couple (English and Spanish) are on the road several months each year giving talks and telling stories to school and library groups. Although both are educators, neither has a full-time job, which makes it easy to pack up their family and follow a speaking tour wherever it takes them. All they have to do is drain the pipes and take home-canned foods and excess musical instruments to one of their neighbors.
“It feels like we’re on the right path for us,” LuAnne said. “We’ll never look back and say we wish we had spent less time with the kids. We have time to be creative and to nurture creativity in our sons.”
Visitors’ children have been known to look around the Hoosier landscape and exclaim, “This is paradise!” To this, the couple give a hearty “amen.” They own their own home, but if they decide to relocate, all they have to do is fold it up and take it with them.
“I guess you could say we’re nomads,” Brian said, with a chuckle.
Anyone interested in knowing more about yurts or pricing one may go to www.yurts.com |
