Every morning Libby Kahler, a Berea College junior, gathers her books and hiking backpack and heads off from her yurt to school.

Libby's Yurt

A yurt is a circular hut or teepee, originally used by nomads in Turkey and Mongolia. Instead of selecting the conventional dormitory experience for her college career, Libby has opted for a more nontraditional living arrangement, and lives in her yurt out in the woods.

She has decided to try this unique living experience while she pursues her Pre-Architecture independent major in Building Design through the Berea SENS program. Her yurt, which was constructed with the help of a few of her friends, is modeled in a contemporary style of Ghengis Khan’s Mongolian “ger."

But simple outdoor living is something that Libby has grown used to for some time. “Well I’ve lived in them for a while,” she shares. “They’re easier to live in than a teepee because they have straight walls. I kind of also just needed some adventure in my daily life, and living in a beige-on-beige apartment did not do it.”

We sat down with Libby one day, before she made her afternoon excursion home, to find out more about this unique living experience and how it has shaped her educational experience as a nontraditional student.

BCNOW: What is it like living in a yurt?

Libby: (smiles and shivers) Right now it’s cold. It’s interesting. To me, round spaces are just so much more alive, as in you’re able to interact with them better. On the other hand it’s very difficult to decorate a round space without just setting your furniture around it. [The yurt] is also 15 feet across, so it’s pretty small. But I love it. Actually, my social life is kind of hurting right now because I just run right home after classes are done because it’s so peaceful [here]. It’s stuck out in the middle of the woods. My neighbors are few and far between. And – (sighs and smiles) it’s wonderful.

The walls are made out of 2x4s ripped into eight pieces and then bolted together so they make a series of diamonds. So I’ve just painted them to make a design. I’ve also just started insulating. So that’s been tricky. I basically use really thick, industrial aluminum foil, and now I’m putting fabric on top of that so you can’t see it. I’m also buying furniture, and I built a loft inside so that I have more usable spaces.

BCNOW: Where did the yurt come from?

Libby: I got it from a company called Laurel Nest Yurts in North Carolina. They were really excited that I wanted to live in one, so they gave me different pieces of yurts that they had sitting around at a discount. With the platform, it was about $2,500. With the insulation and the wood stove and everything that I can take with me, it was probably about $3,000 total.”

BCNOW: Have you encountered any bugs?

Libby: Oh yeah, the BUGS! Yeah, so I found out Kentucky has scorpions – as they came in through my many cracks this summer and stung me several times – and various large spiders – really huge spiders – like hand-sized spiders. Also one evening, I heard some rustling outside and there was a beetle, seriously, like 5 or 6 inches long – and four inches wide . Even my cat refused to chase it down and bite it, which he normally likes to do.

BCNOW: Do you cook in your yurt?

Libby: Mmhm, I actually have a four-burner propane stove that I stole out of the truck camper that I was living in. So that’s pretty sweet!

BCNOW: How has living in the yurt impacted your experience at Berea?

Libby: I’m much happier here. It’s so wonderful to be able to leave [for the day] and not be a student at my house – and to have the privacy and the isolation to do work. It’s really made it so much easier to be here. And it’s made being here more exciting. I also think, in some ways, it’s made more of my professors likely to believe that I can accomplish something. So I’m looking into doing some design and building projects around campus next year and I think that’s kind of helped to improve what people think I’m capable of.

BCNOW: What is the experience teaching you on a more personal level?

Libby: I feel like I’m finding a happy medium between my minimum requirements and what I’m told that I need..you know – house, car, dog sort of thing. So that’s really good for me, because I’ve been kind of like… well, for a summer I just took a tarp and lived under that when it rained and [I] tried to get down to the very, very minimum [of what I need] and now I’m coming back up out of that without going overboard. So that’s what I kind of feel I’m learning about. As a non-hippie, actual adult, [I’m learning] what I really need, versus what do I want and what makes me happy. I’m not a hippie though. I just would like to clarify that….