Why I Didn't Get any Art Done at the Yurt

My family and I just got back from a weekend camping trip in a yurt. My plan, as a professional artist, was to write off part of this trip by doing some artwork while staying there.

When I mentioned where I would be staying, many of my friends asked,

"What's a yurt?"

I didn't know either until my wife booked us a stay in one about a month ago on Airbnb.

A yurt is a cone shaped tent house, a wooded structure covered with skins or fabric that people in Mongolia used back in the day as they traveled around on their fighting campaigns.

Think Genghis Khan.

Nowadays you don't have to be a Mongolian or even a warrior to stay in a yurt.

I have three small children, one with special needs, who hates camping in a tent. It must be too small and confining for him. The yurt was a great way to go for us, because the one we stayed in was 20 feet in diameter, plenty enough size for our family.

We made the 2 1/2 hour drive up to Cable, WI, where the yurt was located--in the North Woods of Wisconsin. On the way, I picked up a whistle, because this is bear country, and you just never know what you might run into. The yurt was in the middle of American Birkebeiner ski trails, which during the fall season are pretty desolate, so it was basically just us in the woods by ourselves.

There was a parking spot available at the base of the hill where the yurt resided. We had hoped to get there by mid-afternoon, so we'd have time to haul our camping gear, food and bedding up the 1/3 mile trail before dark and have supper ready for the kids at the usual time.

But you know how these things go.

We didn't get there until about 5pm, and my son was having some issues that needed to be addressed. With a dolly borrowed from my father-in-law, I strapped everything to it, and navigated the wheeled pack mule up the rugged, rocky trail.

Partway up, I hit a rock that sent all my gear tumbling to the ground! After securing it again, and several short breaths later. my family and I finally made it to the top!

I love my job as a full-time artist but it does nothing to help my fitness level!

That was load one. We got load two and three in the dark. I started the fire and got supper on, while my wife brought our remaining supplies up. She was smart enough to pre-cook spaghetti and meatballs, and so all we had to do was put in the pot and heat it up. Good to go.

Having no electricity, and discovering that our propane tanks were empty, we only had small battery powered lanterns to illuminate the yurt. But it was enough. Your eyes adjust.

There is nothing better at a cool night during autumn than to have a wood stove and plenty of wood ready to burn. And that is exactly what we had. Several large pieces of dry hardwood were stacked neatly next to the stove, ready to crawl inside the cast iron cave and put on a show of dancing flames for our warmth and enjoyment.

I'm a city slicker, but I've played with fire my whole life. So getting the fire going was easy enough. And no, I didn't use any gasoline!

It took about an hour and the yurt was toasty warm.

After praying over the kids and tucking them into bed--we had two bunk beds inside, with plenty of room--we soon discovered how hot a yurt could get. It must have been 100 degrees inside when the cast iron absorbed the heat and radiated it out effortlessly within the circular space.

Still, I'll take that any day over a freezing cold tent. And that's how it would have felt with 35-40 degree temperatures outside.

An interesting thing about the yurt: you can hear everything outside. The fabric layer doesn't provide much noise insulation. You can hear the wind howling around you just as if you were in a tent. As acorns drop onto the roof above, it sounds as if someone was shooting at it with a pop gun. There were windows that you could open up by zipper on the outside--just plastic and screen.

The best part was a skylight with a plastic dome that could be opened up slightly with a crank to let excess heat or smoke out if necessary. As soon as morning came, you could immediately tell just by looking up.

I awoke around dawn and went outside to kindle up the fire. We weren't allowed to cook inside the yurt. The cooking smells could attract bears and other forest critters. And even though the yurt was pretty sturdy--with thick, insulated fabric covering a 2 x 4 and lattice skeleton, it may not withstand a hungry bear's attempts to get inside!

Nearby there were some pieces of birch bark, and even though they and all the kindling around were damp, they caught fire immediately and burned with vigor. It didn't take long, with a good campfire, to brew some Caribou coffee, cook scrambled eggs in my cast iron frying pan, and make fresh oatmeal in my aluminum cooking pot.

We were able to eat breakfast inside, in comfort, at the table sandwiched between the two bunk beds.

Then, after getting some fuel for the day, we went out for a hike.

The trails are very rustic, and hard to follow according to the maps. They started off wide, and had several narrow split-offs that were confusing. It would have been theoretically possible to get very lost out there and ended up in some sort of reality TV show episode where the professional outdoorsman shows exactly everything you did wrong in your quest for survival. Somehow, we ended right back at the parking lot, where there was a warm up cabin for skiers.

We toured the inside a bit, then returned to the hike.

I marveled at the beauty of God's creation. Cascading leaves fell down from the canopy above like red and gold snowflakes, glistening through the filtered sunlight. There was a gentle breeze and it was in the high 50's-- a perfect autumn day. Occasionally, you could hear a hawk calling in the distance.

We got back in the late afternoon and started supper. Fajitas were on the menu. My wife prepared peppers and onions, and beef that we cooked over the fire in aluminum foil pouches. It didn't take long over hot coals.

That's the trick--to let the fire die down to hot coals, and then it's almost like cooking over your Weber charcoal grill. Nothing was burnt. It was cooked to perfection.

Absolutely delicious.

You can't have a camping trip without s'mores, so when it was dark, we got out the marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate bars, and peanut butter. Yes, I love chocolate and peanut butter, and when you have it in a s'more, it's about the best thing you can eat this side of heaven!

All your food and garbage have to be locked up securely in the bear-proof metal box. As big as it was, we just barely fit our stuff in there.

At nighttime, I decided that it would be better to burn smaller pieces of wood, so the stove wouldn't get so piping hot. During the day, I had split the large quarter size logs into eighths.

I am not a lumberjack.

I am an artist.

So instead of chopping the logs with massive, manly, overhead axe-strokes like my brother in law, @Bluerthangreen would have done, I placed a hatchet into my soft artist hands, and split them with a several precise taps from a hammer.

Did the trick.

The wood stove fire was much cooler that night, but I had to get up every two hours or so and stoke it. Not that it mattered anyway. My son asked me regularly, "what time is it?" about once every 30 minutes until he fell completely asleep at 2 a.m.

Morning came really early the following day. This was our last day there at the yurt. Basically, we had time to cook breakfast and then pack up and go.

In the morning, while my wife was packing, my 8-year old daughter, apparently bored, made a zipline out of the twine I had strung across the deck rail and tree the night before to hang a lantern from. She took my blaze orange hoodie and used that to suspend my son's stuffed polar bear and send him down across the "ravine."

Think of the amazing things your kids can do when they don't have an i-Pad!

My youngest, who had her third birthday in the yurt, was busy drawing on her magnetic sketch pad. Previously, when we asked her how old she was, she said "I can't be three until I eat my cupcake."

Is not eating cupcakes a way to keep from getting a year older? Maybe she's on to something!

Anyway, I actually thought I might be able to do some drawing on the trip, and so I packed my sketchpad and pencils with me.

But what did I discover?

Living off grid with no electricity doesn't leave an artist much time to do art! Now I realize why you didn't see much good artwork in the ancient cultures until the high civilization of the Greco-Roman empire. And again, really nothing fantastic in the Middle Ages until the Renaissance.

People were just trying to survive!

Managing two fires and cooking took most of our time during the trip. And we brought our food in. Just think if we had to hunt and fish for it!

Nevertheless, it was great to unplug for a couple days, enjoy nature within the interesting and relatively comfortable lodgings of a yurt.

I was toying around with the idea of living in a yurt prior to this trip. I don't think I'd want to live in a yurt now, but I would definitely like to stay there again.

Only just a little bit longer.

Have a blessed day,

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