Music, Mountains, Yurt

We recently installed a 27 foot yurt for musician and designer of Freenotes Musical Instruments, Richard Cooke. The yurt will be used as a music studio. The instruments and the yurt come together to create a magical and zen atmosphere in the beautiful mountains of Durango, Colorado. Take a look and a listen.



Freenotes provides a system enabling non-musicians to step into the satisfying experience of playing music solo or in a group. The collection of instruments is designed to be played together easily because there are no wrong notes. Knowledge of music, keys or scales is not necessary. Freenotes provides a unique way of interacting through spontaneous creative expression. The sounds created are always pleasing. Freenotes Instruments can be found in school playgrounds, municipal parks or community projects all over the world.

Turns out Richard is friends with Bill Coperthwaite, often referred to as the founder of modern yurts in the western world. We, of course, thought that was pretty cool.

Backyard Bungalow - Cimarron Platform Tents

When I first began working at The Colorado Yurt Company I was eager to learn about the yurts, tipis and canvas tents we manufacture and sell and how people were using them. I was fascinated that these structures offered individuals who had little to no construction experience a way to build extra space into their traditional living arrangements or even a way to build a whole new primary living space. They could assemble the structures with their own two hands and they could do it in a way that was more affordable and sustainable than traditional building methods. As I was looking at websites of organizations who were using our structures, I ran across Mary Jane’s Farm and fell in love with our Cimarron Canvas Tents and the way in which she was using them to share organic farming and simple farm life with folks.

I was hooked. It didn’t take long until I got a Cimarron Tent of my own. My building experience was fairly limited, but with our platform plans in hand and a trip to the lumber yard I jumped in enthusiastically. I wanted a comfortable, shabby-chic, rustic feel so I used rough cut lumber for the platform flooring. However, I’m not too fond of critters with more than four legs so I placed 4’x8’ sheets of thin plywood on the floor joists before placing the rough cut planks on top. This prevented the previously mentioned critters from crawling up through the cracks.

Finally, I was ready for the tent. I went with a 12’x14’, mosquito netting on all sides, a fly, and a stove pipe outlet for the tent and the fly. I chose our best fabric, TuffStar, because it comes with a 5 year warranty and stands up best to UV rays. My location takes the baking Colorado sun all day long so that was important. It went up easily with three other friends, although it was a little heavier than I expected. We laid the tent on its side on top of the platform and slid in the center ridge pole and uprights that I had preassembled. We stationed one person at each upright pole and they placed their foot at the base of the pole so it wouldn’t slide while the other two people raised the whole assembly. Once it was upright, we centered it on the platform and tied out the sides of the tent to the side rails of the platform. The fly went on next, secured to the center ridgepole at the top and tied out to the side rails. The last step was to screw the bottom of the tent walls to the platform. All in all, it took a couple of days to build the platform and a couple of hours to get the tent up.

I’ve had the tent up for a couple of years now and it has really become an extension of my home. A futon, a dining table, a food prep counter, a rocking chair and a wood stove create a cozy atmosphere but still allow the tent to keep a very spacious, open feel. Since my house is less than 1000 square feet, the tent gives me extra space for visiting guests, dinner parties and happy hour. Sometimes it’s just nice to get out of the normal day to day routine, cook on a wood stove and hang out in natural light for a change. It’s kind of a mini grounding experience without leaving home. I’ve overnighted in it when the temps were single digit and stayed toasty with the wood stove cranking. I open the front and back doors in the summer and almost always get a nice breeze passing through.

Although my tent doesn’t overlook an entire organic farm like Mary Jane’s, it does offer up a nice view of a healthy little patch of organic garden. I love sharing both the garden and the tent with friends and family and I can tell by the smiles and the comments that they think it’s pretty groovy scene also. Check out Mary Jane’s site... http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/bb/ . Maybe you’ll fall in love too!

Yurt Film

We at the Colorado Yurt Company have long be interested in a certain genre of film that comes from countries in and near the former Soviet Union. Films like The Cave of the Yellow Dog and
Mongolian Ping Pong depict modern nomads and the slow but certain modification of their lives out on the Central Asian Steppe. These films usually move fairly slowly- smiles and glances, not bomb-blasts or love affairs, move the plot along. And there are always slow pans of heart-breakingly beautiful and desolate landscapes and, of course, yurts. In fact, Salon.com film reviewer, Andrew O'Hehir, recently dubbed this sub-genre "Yurt Cinema" and reviewed a film called Tulpan which he calls the Citzen Kane of Yurt Cinema. We've not yet seen the movie but can't wait. We'd love to hear from anyone that has seen the picture or about any films that you feel fit into the "Yurt Cinema" genra. Check out O'Hehir's review of Tulpan.

*Promotional photo for Tulpan provided by Zeitgeist Films.

Yurts in Paris: Colorado Yurts Played Host to Voices from Around the Globe

In January I had the opportunity to travel to Paris, France to see 25 Colorado Yurts go up in the Grand Palais. The yurts were for an installation by famed photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his group Good Planet. The art piece is called 6 Billion Others.

The Grand Palais is a structure of staggering proportions. It dates from 1900 but today it still has one of the largest glass ceilings in the world. Event organizers (from the design firm Scene) told us that although the Grand Palais is an awesome space, it can be rather difficult to control. That's why they chose to use yurts as the space in which the art would actually happen. The 25 yurts were to comprise 25 mini-cinemas.

We arrived before the show opened and yurts were starting to pop up all around us. Some were fully pitched. The latice and rafters were up on others. The effect was awesome. Normally we think of yurts as natural and traditional spaces, meant to be pitched in organic settings. But here they were surrounded by steel and glass- a monument to industrialisation. Colorado Yurts are traditional but have adapted and because of this they work well in all sorts of environments. Even in the most modern of settings they fit.

Check out this video to see one of the most impressive yurt pitches ever:


We didn't quite know what the organizers meant by saying that the Grand Palais is difficult to control until the show's opening night. Of course, we liked the idea of yurts in Paris and we know that they make beautiful settings in which to show movies, but there was a practical element to using them to too: Paris in January is cold and it's very difficult to heat a space that is 72,000 square meters. Yurts, on the other hand, are very good at retaining heat when necessary. So when we arrived on opening night we, along with the many thousands of other guests, headed straight to the warmth of the yurts.

Each yurt showcased a different film in which people from around the world responded to a different question. One film asked individuals what war has meant in their lives. Another spoke to the meaning of family; still another was about how to make love last. The films were honest, moving, and sometimes funny. As we watched regular people from around the world, we understood something more about the similarities and diversity among the world's population. At the same time we realized that we were sitting with people from around the world and there, inside the yurts, we began to feel a little closer to them.

Check out some of the videos at the 6 Billion Others website.
To learn more about the Colorado Yurt Company's role in 6 Billion Others take a look at this.

-By Sam Kigar
*Photo by Dominique Erhard

Colorado Yurt Set Up Slide Show

Check out this video we put together showing how to put up your yurt, from deck to dome:

(The video is not a substitute for directions!)

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