Mark's Blog

Don't tell her that there are a lot of modern yurts in Hawaii (also popular in the Pacific NW for some soggy reason). Hippie types use them for homesteading there land here, back when hippies could afford land here. We almost lived in one when we first moved here, but it was an illegal structure and they wouldn't give us a mailbox or phone line--so we wouldn't be able to get DSL. Glad we didn't in the end because we now know that was a rainy part of the island.

You would've lived in a yurt if only you could've gotten DSL and a mailbox? The Hawaiian islands really are a nicer place to be in the winter ;-)

Probably. We had hoped to be homesteading hippies one day ourselves, yurt and all, so we thought we should try it. Modern yurts are made of thick rubberized canvas built on a wood platform, and the one we looked at was new and clean, so it didn't have any mold problems yet.

In Hawaii along the coast, all you need is shelter from the rain and wind, and a blanket for winter nights. Most homes have no insulation or weather tightness either. With a yurt, you get one big room to divide into living, sleeping, and storage areas. The kitchen and bathroom were in a separate screened in shack nearby. Growing up, my family had friends with property in Kentucky were they lived all summer in similar conditions, so we all have a Swiss Family Robinson ideal.

Also, the yurt's rent was half of any house we looked at. In the end we chose house living which led to a computer job again, and furniture and books that would be out of place in a tent. Whose to say that maybe living in a yurt, instead of making us long for the comforts of a house, would've made us simplify our lives for real.