A Yurt to Call Home Michael Jeffery, 31
If there’s one thing that’s typical about university students, it’s where they live. If they’re not in their parents’ base- ments, they’re in dorm rooms on campus or in apartments they have to share with a roommate or two to make ends meet. Michael Jeffery wasn’t keen on any of these options. So he did what any skilled young man who feels comfort- able in the great outdoors would do: he made his own lodgings. In 2015, before becoming an Adventure Studies student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, Jeffery built and lived in a Mongolian yurt (basically defined as a big round tent) on farmland on the outskirts of Kamloops. Fully off-grid, he had no running water and no electricity. The idea to build this glorified tent hit him when he was
working with at-risk youth in Regina (he had landed the job while on a hitchhiking trip across Canada). During his stay there, he had access to a woodshop and ended up building part of the yurt over the winter with the kids. He made the frame using lumber he cut down to size and pieced together with hardware, and he fashioned a covering from recycled billboard vinyl (not the typical yak felt or hide used by Mongolian nomads). When it was time to head to Kamloops, he simply packed it up (yurts are easy to transport, of course, since they’re favoured by nomads) and moved it in his truck. Although yurts are usually fairly small, Jeffery’s was a
spacious 444 square feet with seven-ſt.-high walls and a 12-ſt.- high peak in the centre (where he had a round skylight). “It was very large by traditional standards and actually too big for me — it took a lot to heat,” he says. (He used a homemade wooden stove for that purpose.) His yurt also sported a carpeted plywood floor, a kitchen, a queen-sized bed, plenty of storage, some benches, a place to study, a deck and “lots of room to do yoga, dance, play music and host gatherings. The most people I had sleep over was 23.” (It was university, aſter all.) Jeffery spent nearly two years in the yurt — he even stayed through the winters. “The first one was a bit challenging; it definitely toughened me up. I gained appreciation for the simple things — fire, warm clothes, hot meals,” he says. Still, he valued being closer to nature and away from distractions such as Wi-Fi and television. Having saved more than $20,000 in rent during his two years
at university, Jeffery says he can now travel without needing to work full time. The 31-year-old is currently in Mongolia study- ing traditional yurts, and he plans to build and sell them, as well as live in one, when he returns to Canada in December. To Jeffery, there are several reasons to make a yurt home:
“financial freedom, simple living allowing for the more impor- tant things in life, living closer to nature, the satisfaction that comes from building your own home, being environmentally conscious and avoiding the bondage of mortgage.”
NOVEMBER 2017 | CPA MAGAZINE | 37
Jeff Bassett/KlixPix/The Globe and Mail
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