Yurtopia

NEW! SIGG Water Bottles at YURTOPIA!

2009-11-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

SIGG bottles are manufactured in an ecologically-friendly environment and are 100% recyclable after their very long lives. In fact, most SIGGs in Europe are still being used 10-20 years after purchase. More info on SIGG bottles click HERE.

Click HERE to purchase your SIGG bottle from YURTOPIA!

How To Build A Yurt

2009-03-31T10:01:00.001-07:00

Montage yourte
by leschamps

12-year-old Builds Homeless Shelter Yurt from Trash

2009-02-26T10:43:00.000-08:00

12-year-old Max Wallack submitted this amazing "Home Dome"—a homeless shelter made from plastic, wire, and packing peanuts—to a recent "Trash to Treasure" design contest. Based on a Mongolian yurt, it's warm and includes a bed. Read More Here...

Repost from Gizmodo.com

Pre-Fab House from the 40's Closely Resembles A Yurt

2009-01-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

Prefabricated House For Defense Needs
This radical-looking prefabricated house is one of the many types which have’ been submitted to the Division of Defense Housing Coordination as a quick, cheap method of housing defense workers. The house weighs only a ton, and can be constructed in six days by one man. At the right is an interior view of the novel “defense” house.

Dymaxion Deployment Units, "DDU's", created in 1940-41 and filed for patent in March of 1941, DDUs were first designed for British military use. Used by the American military after Pearl Harbor, they were loosely based on the construction principles first publicized by Fuller’s “Dymaxion house” in 1927. “Dymaxion” was a word coined by Fuller to express his principle of maximum function for minimum effort. The dymaxion house, based on this principle, was a pre-fabricated circular construction supported by a single central mast (Buckminster Fuller Institute 1995; Klotz 1988; Roth 1979). The DDUs had circular walls and a unique domed metal roof, with a ventilator at the central apex. This design had the specific purpose of creating a warm-air thermal outside the building, together with a corresponding cool air draft pulled groundward in the middle. The ventilator served to pull this downward draft of cooler air into the DDU. This natural air-conditioning was just one of the unique features of Fuller’s DDUs (Buckminster Fuller Institute 1995).” (Reed and Swanson 1996 Pg. 17, 19).

More info can be found HERE.

Mongolians Love Yurtopia!

2008-12-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

This photo of "astonished" Mongolian women viewing our Yurtopia store was found on Flickr and sent to us by email. Check it out HERE!

A Buddhist Couple Living In A Yurt Make Headlines

2008-05-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

By Leslie Kaufman, May 15, 2008 (reposted from the NY Times)

TEN years ago, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, Buddhist teachers with a growing following in the United States and abroad, took vows never to separate, night or day.

By “never part,” they did not mean only their hearts or spirits. They meant their bodies as well. And they gave themselves a range of about 15 feet.

If they cannot be seated near each other on a plane, they do not get on. When she uses an airport restroom, he stands outside the door. And when they are here at home in their yurt in the Arizona desert, which has neither running water nor electricity, and he is inspired by an idea in the middle of the night, she rises from their bed and follows him to their office 100 yards down the road, so he can work.

Their partnership, they say, is celibate. It is, as they describe it, a high level of Buddhist practice that involves confronting their own imperfections and thereby learning to better serve the world.

“It forces you to deal with your own emotions so you can’t say, ‘I’ll take a break,’ ” said Mr. Roach, 55, who trained in the same Tibetan Buddhist tradition as the Dalai Lama. After becoming a monk in 1983, he trained on-and-off in a Buddhist monastery for 20 years, and is one of a handful of Westerners who has earned the title of geshe, the rough equivalent of a religious doctorate. “You are in each other’s faces 24 hours a day,” he said. “You must deal with your anger or your jealousy.”

Ms. McNally said, “From a Buddhist perspective, it purifies your own mind.” Ms. McNally is 35 and uses the title of Lama, or teacher, an honor not traditionally bestowed on women by the Tibetan orders.

Their exacting commitment to this ideal of spiritual partnership has been an inspiration to many. In China and Israel, and in the United States, where they are often surrounded by devotees, their lectures on how laypeople can build spiritual partnerships are often packed with people seeking mates or ways to deepen their marriages. They hope their recently published book, “The Eastern Path to Heaven,” will appeal to Christians and broaden their American audience.

But their practice — which even they admit is radical by the standards of the religious community whose ideas they aim to further — has sent shock waves through the Tibetan Buddhist community as far as the Dalai Lama himself, whose office indicated its disapproval of the living arrangement by rebuffing Mr. Roach’s attempt to teach at Dharamsala, India, in 2006. (In a letter, the office said his “unconventional behavior does not accord with His Holiness’s teachings and practices.”)

“There is a tremendous amount of opprobrium by the Tibetan monks; they think they have gone wacky,” said Robert Thurman, a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism at Columbia University.

Professor Thurman, a former monk himself, describes himself as a friend and admirer of Mr. Roach, and said that after the geshe made his relationship with Ms. McNally public in 2003, he begged him to renounce his monastic vows and to stop wearing the robes that mark him as a member of a monastic order. Mr. Roach declined, and the two have not spoken since.

“He is doing this partnership thing and insisting on being a monk,” Professor Thurman said. “It is superhuman. He says he is staying celibate, but people find it hard to believe.”

The yurt in which Mr. Roach and Ms. McNally live when they are not traveling the world (which is often about half the year) sits in the high desert some 100 miles east of Tucson, on a platform overlooking a rift in the cactus-speckled hills. For 100 acres around, the land is the property of Diamond Mountain University, an unaccredited school that Mr. Roach founded with Ms. McNally in 2004 to teach Buddhist principles and translation skills.

Although devoid of modern conveniences, the yurt they live in, which is 22 feet in diameter, feels almost luxurious compared with the spare, desiccated landscape around it. On one side of the tent is their double bed, and beside it a commode elegantly disguised as a wood side table. The floor is covered with carpets. A few carved wooden chests hold clothes and pillows.

READ MORE HERE: www.nytimes.com

Reposted from The NY Times, By Leslie Kaufman, May 15, 2008

A Doggie Yurt!

2008-04-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

Created by Jennifer of The Felt Mouse, this is the first and only (as far as I know!) Yurt just for Dogs! Made for less than $10 as part of the Dollar Store Challenge from Crafster.com, the do-it-yourself doggie yurt is sure to make your best friend drool.... Read more about it in Jennifer's Blog.

I don't know about you but I think Jennifer's pooch, Chuy, might need a doggie Yurt Shirt from Yurtopia to wear in his new Yurt!

Yurtopia T-shirts Now Available Thru Spreadshirt.com!

2008-02-21T12:22:00.000-08:00

Now you can find even more styles of original Yurtopia designs available thru the online t-shirt shop, Spreadshirt. Currently, only a select few of the best selling designs are available but more will be added soon!

Off-Grid Products From Yurtopia

2008-02-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Yurtopia Online T-shirt store has now implemented an affiliate store through Amazon.com to sell more off-grid and eco-friendly products. Now you can buy a "Live off-Grid" t-shirt AND a solar powered flash light all in one place!

Man Lives in Eco-Friendly Yurt

2007-10-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

GLENVILLE -- Morning light splashes onto black solar panels.

Inside, a teabag bleeds into boiling water, heated on a wooden stove.

A couple of years ago, John Brown wanted to minimize his environmental footprint, so he built this home....

Read the full story HERE

Yurts - Round and Unbound by Becky Kemery

2007-10-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

In the view of philosophical mathematicians, numbers and their associated shapes represent stages in the process of becoming … Each has a life of its own and a unique role in the cosmic myth … Each represents a different problem-solving strategy in the cosmic economy.
—Michael S. Schneider, “A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science”

A place to come home to. A secure roof overhead to shed summer rains, and walls that protect from winter winds. Most people would think “house”. I prefer the concept of “shelter”, which allows my home to be moveable. And it doesn’t have to be square.

For a while I had the nickname Yurt Woman. That was because I lived in a particular form of semi-permanent, round shelter. Not a tent, not a teepee, but a yurt. Yurts were originally nomadic shelters used on the high plateaus of Central Asia. Having proven themselves over centuries, they remain one of the oldest indigenous forms of shelter still in use today.

In Mongolia the frame of the yurt is covered with felted wool; here, the covering is canvas. The yurts I’ve lived in (three of them) had lattice walls six feet high encircling a 24-foot diameter space, with a conical roof leading to a skylight at the top. Pacific Yurts, an Oregon company, fabricated one yurt; a woman who later became my friend built the other two. In all three yurts I lived in the woods, near a creek or river. The sound of rushing water washed through my ears 24 hours a day. Birds woke me in the morning. At night I fell asleep looking up through the skylight bubble at the moon and stars.

My favorite yurt—in fact my favorite shelter experience of all time—was a yurt in the Cascade Mountains located just 50 feet from the Breitenbush River. A magical path led through lush woods to Adirondack chairs at the river’s edge. The floor of the yurt was made of cob (clay, sand and straw, a mixture similar to adobe). It had a radiant heating system, meaning there were pipes running through the cob floor that carried hot springs water and warmed my feet—and the yurt—through the snowy winter months. In the center, under the skylight, was a 10’x12’ rectangle of sand, not cob; a rubber hose of hot springs water wound its way through. I placed reed mats over the sand and it became a favorite spot for women friends on their moon time to come, to curl up on the soft warmth with a good book.

Shimmering sheer fabric hung from the roof rafters across the foot of my bed. On the opposite side of the yurt was an air mattress on the warm floor, a space occupied by guests who came and went about half the time that I lived there. I’ll never forget all the gatherings that happened. Twelve community members sitting in a circle toasting and grinding spices by hand during a new-moon ritual with a visitor from South Africa. Faces glowing in the light of dozens of candles as twenty or more friends came together on various occasions to play music, sing and dance. The faces changed, as did the events, but the magic … oh, the magic. It was something I’ve never experienced, never could have, in the right-angled, rectilinear places most of us call home.

There is a reason that ancient nomadic tribes chose to live in circular spaces. The reason goes beyond the consummate efficiency of the circle (which allows for the largest possible floor space using the least amount of materials and minimal exposure to the elements). Beyond the fact that circular structures provide less wind resistance. Even when the Native American tribes settled into square structures, they continued to use round spaces for rituals and meetings.(1)

The Oglala Sioux elder, Black Elk, offers an explanation
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round …. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is in a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop.

There is something about the very shape of the circle that provides us a “glimpse into the wholeness, unity, and divine order of the universe,” says mathematical philosopher Michael Schneider. “The circle is a reflection of the world’s—and our own—deep perfection, unity, design excellence, wholeness, and divine nature.” (A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe, p.4) Somehow the very shape of the circle connects us at a primordial, cellular level, to the unity of all things—to our inter-connectedness with each other and our connection to the whole.

The Ger
The yurt, or ger (rhymes with “air”) as the Mongols call it, was birthed in the context of Shamanism, an ancient consciousness that held to the connectedness of all things and sought to maintain balance therein. Every aspect of the ger and life within it has spiritual connection and significance, from the placement of the door and furnishings to the central fire and the direction in which one walks inside the ger.

The internal floor plan of the ger, every ger, is based on the four directions, much like the Native American Medicine Wheel or the Navajo hogan. The door of the ger always opens to the south; the north side is sacred. Yin and yang are east and west, the masculine side being to the west, the feminine in the east. Family possessions are laid out according to this floor plan. Women’s tools (for cooking, weaving, etc.) are kept on the east side. Riding tack, saddles and the tools that men use are hung on the west side. If there is an altar it is to the north. The fire in the middle is the sacred center, doorway to the world beneath. Smoke rises up through the skylight smoke hole, doorway to the world above. Mongolians believe that these worlds must be kept in balance; it is the balance of all things in the one, the circle.

Perhaps spending time in circular environments might help shift our fragmented, linear consciousness to a way of being in the world that is more whole, connected and cyclical. Children growing up in or attending school in yurts, for example (and their number is growing), may well develop a consciousness quite distinct from those who spend their school hours, days, and years locked away in buildings of squares and rectangles. It will be interesting to observe the difference over time.

Yurts: an Oregon Love Affair
So how did Mongolian nomadic shelters wind up in North America? It’s another of those unique Oregon stories, Oregon via the East Coast. In the early 1960’s Harvard doctoral student Bill Coperthwaite saw a National Geographic article by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas about his visit to Mongolia (Mongolia at the time was closed to most Western visitors). Photographs of Mongolian gers inspired Bill. He designed his dissertation (in education) around building wooden yurt structures with groups of students. He went on to establish The Yurt Foundation and over the years has helped hundreds of groups build yurts as educational or community projects. One of the students working on the first projects with Bill was a gifted 17-year-old named David Raitt. Inspired, David went on to pursue yurt design and building as his passion and vocation, building yurt communities in New Hampshire and California and establishing California Yurt Works.

Across the continent from Bill Coperthwaite, a group of visionary hippie tree planters called the Hoedads were living in the woods and replanting Oregon’s forests. Hoedad Charlie Crawford (mathematician on sabbatical) decided the yurt would be a perfect Hoedad shelter, being comfortable and cozy and also portable. Charlie modernized the yurt structure to include aircraft cable around the top of the lattice walls, and produced numerous canvas yurts for the Hoedads under the name Centering Shelterworks.

It was Alan Bair who put canvas yurts on the map. Picking up where Charlie left off, Alan started Pacific Yurts (www.yurts.com) in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and introduced innovations like NASA insulation and architectural fabrics. While continuing to perfect yurt design, Alan and his team spread the word about yurts locally and nationally, eventually marketing canvas yurts worldwide. It was Alan who first sold yurts to the Parks Department for use in campgrounds, yet another Oregon initiative that has become a national movement.

Back east again, architectural student Morgan Reiter caught the yurt bug in the 60’s while visiting a community with yurts designed by Bill Coperthwaite. The combination of Morgan’s study of indigenous architecture with exposure to Bill Coperthwaite’s and David Raitt’s designs inspired Morgan to build a yurt for himself when he moved to Oregon. Friends asked Morgan to build them yurts as well, and Oregon Yurtworks was born. Oregon Yurtworks (www.yurtworks.com) uses a pre-fabricated frame-panel system for building wooden yurts that reduces the costs for clients and keeps the wooden yurt homes, while not exactly nomadic, still more portable than their conventional counterparts. Oregon residents are in the unique position of having convenient access to both canvas and wooden yurts, made by local companies.

Nomad Shelters
Canvas yurts are great for modern nomads and people in transition. Typical of nomadic shelters, they use minimal materials and are light on the land. The wooden deck for a yurt takes carpentry skills and few days to complete, but putting up the yurt itself takes less than a day (my 20’ Pacific Yurt took 5 people about 5 hours to get up), and taking it down and loading it is about the same. The Mongolians spend 30 minutes to an hour putting theirs up, but then they do it many times a year and are better practiced at it.(2)

Yurt dwellers often find themselves in challenging situations typical of nomads attempting to live within a settled culture. Building officials may try to run yurt dwellers out of town, or make them comply with restrictions designed for permanent housing. Nesting Bird Yurts (www.nbyurts.com), a yurt company in Port Townsend, Washington, has made building code issues a priority. It is possible to purchase a yurt from Nesting Bird that complies with applicable Uniform Building Code restrictions, and the company works closely with clients seeking to comply with local building codes.(3)

Settled cultures historically have tended to misunderstand nomads and to try to control their wandering ways. One might say that trouble between settler and nomad started when farmer Cain, son of Adam and Eve, killed his brother Abel, a nomadic herder (Genesis 4:1-16). Bureaucracies in every age have tried to force nomads to take on settled ways and become more “controllable”. A tragic example of this is the First Nations of this land, who fought to maintain their nomadic existence but eventually were either eliminated or placed on “reservations”. In a similar vein, Stalin decided in the 1930’s that the yurt dwelling Kazaks of the Soviet Union should become cotton farmers; they resisted and a quarter of their population (of 4 million) were killed; 80% of their herds were lost as well. They are now cotton farmers and live in square concrete-block housing.

In studying the ways of nomadic cultures I have become convinced that contemporary Western culture, especially, needs to learn from nomadic ways. The simplicity of life, connection to the natural world, and sense of community that the ancient nomadic cultures maintained are things we must learn if we are to live harmoniously and live well on this planet.

Take simplicity, for example: numerous books on simplicity are being written right now, but nothing matches the simplicity that inevitably occurs naturally when carrying one’s possessions from place to place. For nomads, possessions are of necessity few; each item must serve multiple purposes and is chosen with care and an eye to beauty. This is an extraordinary alternative to our settled consumer society where families must rent storage units to hold their excess possessions.

Likewise, nomadic cultures do not overpopulate; their way of life will not sustain it. Nor will it sustain injuring the earth with impunity. Nomadic herders only survive because they have learned how to live in harmony with the natural world and with the animals that sustain them. The cruel horrors that western agribusiness enacts on farm animals would be unthinkable to these people, who treat their animals with a love and respect that is beyond our cultural comprehension (e.g., singing to them, celebrating them in song and dance, and caring for the weak and sick ones by the fire).

People become nomads in modern Western culture for the same reasons they do in every culture: the freedom of the road, the call of Spirit, the need to travel for work (origin of the term journeyman). Different now is the means of travel (Volkswagen bus and airplane instead of gypsy cart and camel); communication is much easier with voicemail and the internet. We still meet up with each other when in same vicinity, and we gather with the tribe every summer season for barter faires and music festivals and in the tent cities that spring up annually in wilderness and deserts across the land, events like the Oregon Country Fair and Burning Man and the Rainbow gatherings. Here we share the stories of our journeys, trade goods and, in the evenings, gather around the fire to sing and dance, recite poetry, sometimes talk politics and often drum through the night. Participants are a mixture of full-time nomads, semi-nomads and nomads-for-the week; they are all participating in nomadic events and the ways of nomadic culture.

And the Yurt? The yurt is a gift, an ancient nomadic shelter that has been made available to modern culture, thanks largely to Oregon visionaries. Versatile, beautiful, and spiritual, it gives us an option for shelter that is gentle to the planet. In its combination of ancient design and modern materials it is a fitting symbol of 21st century nomadism. Yurts provide the opportunity to live in the round, to expand our consciousness, and we are fortunate in Oregon that, if we choose to settle, we can move from a nomad shelter to a more permanent wood panel yurt.

Whatever form of shelter we choose, it is important to incorporate shapes that hold us well and assist our evolution and that of our families. And it is important, for us and for the planet, to learn from nomads old and new, to respect nomadic culture and help create a system where nomads and settlers can live mutually complementary lives.

Reposted from Alternatives Magazine, Summer 2001, Issue 18.
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com

Yurt Etiquette

2007-10-11T14:29:00.001-07:00

"There are a number of rules which guests should follow.

When entering the yurt it is considered impolite to step on the threshold or to hold onto the ropes.

All weapons should be left outside. Do not point your feet at or put rubbish on the fire.

Do not sit with your back to the altar, whistle, write in red pen, step over older people or point a knife at anyone.

One should take at least a little of any food or drink offered. When offered arak or vodka flick a small amount to the sky, the wind and the earth before drinking."

(reposted from everything2.com)

Did You Know? Quick Yurt Trivia...

2007-10-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

The entrance of Mongolian Yurt always faces south.

The north is the most auspicious part of the yurt, where the valuables and the shrine are kept.

When mongolian women enter the yurt they head to the Eastern side and men head west.

Whenever moving inside the ger (yurt), one must always move in a sunwise direction. This same movement is also required in shamanic dances, worship, and ritual.

Traditionally, during the building of the Yurt, women are not allowed to touch the center ring (also called the Tono)

Yurt Video!

2007-10-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

See how a traditional Mongolian Yurt (ger) is assembled!

What Is a Yurt anyway?? yes.. there are some that still don't know..

2007-10-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

YURT

Noun1. A circular domed dwelling that is portable and self-supporting; originally used by nomadic Mongol and Turkic people of central Asia but now used as inexpensive alternative or temporary housing.