Listening to the Wildlife in a Yurt
One of the great advantages, and the great disadvantages of living in a yurt in the backwoods is that you are put into intimate contact with nature.
That's nature, as in skunks strolling by; the occasional black bear helping himself to your Canada plums, and then leaving a deposit to remind you that he visited; coyotes forgetting that you have to work the next day and singing you to sleep at 4 a.
m.
; squirrels that like your tarpaulin shelter so much they decide to store their winter dinners in the flaps of the tarpaulins.
But, as challenging or exciting as these visits may sound, the experience of living, day after day, in this pristine setting highlights the beauty of a minimal footprint in the environment.
We have discovered that there are more than 35 varieties of birds just in the 10 acres immediately surrounding our home.
There are songbirds, waterfowl and predator birds, to list a few.
We have learned many of their calls, and what each call signifies.
We have learned the feeding & flying schedules of our daytime, dusk and nocturnal feathered friends.
The resident sapsucker does his best Buddy Rich drum imitation on the cowling of my old Cockshutt tractor, just because it makes more noise than drumming on a tree.
We have discovered that white-tailed deer acclimatize quickly to the human presence, and will actually ignore us if they are at one end of our long, narrow garden while they are grazing at the other.
But we have discovered that deer will flee at distant dog barking almost as readily as at a nearby one, but that they don't give a darn if a raccoon passes within feet.
Mosquitoes have also claimed their time of day and seasons.
They seem to follow close on the heels of the 504 wood ticks that I picked off my arms, legs, neck, hair, feet, etc.
this spring.
In turn, black flies claim the heat of the day, and wasps or hornets usurp the late August afternoons.
Paramount in the list of advantages, for me, is the fact that I have only had to mow the grass around the yurt three times this year, to keep the bugs at bay.
Nature is much more attractive than a groomed lawn, anyway! We have also learned, though, that rain in a tent imparts a feeling of peace and solitude, while heavy rain drumming on the heavier, larger drum skin roof of a yurt sounds like you are living under a waterfall, and instills an anxiety that the roof will not withstand the beating.
It does, of course.
Living in a yurt is about listening, not just to the sounds, but to the heartbeat of nature around you, and the pulse of the seasons.
It is about capturing each moment in your emotional database, and knowing that you are not the custodian of your environment: you are a part of it.
Nothing more, nothing less.
That's nature, as in skunks strolling by; the occasional black bear helping himself to your Canada plums, and then leaving a deposit to remind you that he visited; coyotes forgetting that you have to work the next day and singing you to sleep at 4 a.
m.
; squirrels that like your tarpaulin shelter so much they decide to store their winter dinners in the flaps of the tarpaulins.
But, as challenging or exciting as these visits may sound, the experience of living, day after day, in this pristine setting highlights the beauty of a minimal footprint in the environment.
We have discovered that there are more than 35 varieties of birds just in the 10 acres immediately surrounding our home.
There are songbirds, waterfowl and predator birds, to list a few.
We have learned many of their calls, and what each call signifies.
We have learned the feeding & flying schedules of our daytime, dusk and nocturnal feathered friends.
The resident sapsucker does his best Buddy Rich drum imitation on the cowling of my old Cockshutt tractor, just because it makes more noise than drumming on a tree.
We have discovered that white-tailed deer acclimatize quickly to the human presence, and will actually ignore us if they are at one end of our long, narrow garden while they are grazing at the other.
But we have discovered that deer will flee at distant dog barking almost as readily as at a nearby one, but that they don't give a darn if a raccoon passes within feet.
Mosquitoes have also claimed their time of day and seasons.
They seem to follow close on the heels of the 504 wood ticks that I picked off my arms, legs, neck, hair, feet, etc.
this spring.
In turn, black flies claim the heat of the day, and wasps or hornets usurp the late August afternoons.
Paramount in the list of advantages, for me, is the fact that I have only had to mow the grass around the yurt three times this year, to keep the bugs at bay.
Nature is much more attractive than a groomed lawn, anyway! We have also learned, though, that rain in a tent imparts a feeling of peace and solitude, while heavy rain drumming on the heavier, larger drum skin roof of a yurt sounds like you are living under a waterfall, and instills an anxiety that the roof will not withstand the beating.
It does, of course.
Living in a yurt is about listening, not just to the sounds, but to the heartbeat of nature around you, and the pulse of the seasons.
It is about capturing each moment in your emotional database, and knowing that you are not the custodian of your environment: you are a part of it.
Nothing more, nothing less.