If you’re looking to spend a night out in frigid temperatures–and who isn’t?–Colorado is the place to be. I personally have skied and snowshoed into a dozen 10th Mt. Division huts, the ring of high-country cabins that extends from Vail down through Aspen. But until I moved here, I’d never heard of a yurt. No surprise there. I’m from Connecticut and yurts were invented in Mongolia 3,000 years ago. Typically, yurts are self-supporting circular structures with a quick tear-down time, which is helpful if your yak herd suddenly bolts for the Himalayas.
Former Supreme Court Chief Justice William O. Douglas encountered yurts during a trip to Mongolia, which he wrote about in The National Geographic in 1962. Soon backcountry enthusiasts would plop yurts down in all sorts of mountain paradises. Like Colorado.
Yonder Yurts, based in Gould, is currently taking reservations for seven yurts in State Forest State Park–which is the most boring, redundant name ever applied to an astonishingly beautiful place. I’ve stayed in State Forest State Park a half-dozen times, so I’m entitled to propose that we rename it William O. Douglas State Park, for his straight-up contributions to circular lodgings.
Douglas wasn’t just a revolutionary camper. He also had good advice for how to handle an early dusk in the shadow of the Medicine Bow mountains. “As nightfall does not come all at once,” the Chief justice wrote, “neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of a change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”
That was certainly true—minus the oppression—a few Februaries ago, when a friend and I sat on the front deck of the North Fork Canadian yurt, in the heart of the state park, sharing beers and watching for moose in the gloaming. None showed their long faces, but the beer was just right. Until the sun set, that is, and the temperature plunged. We retreated indoors, fired up the wood stove, and whipped up a hearty soup on the propane burner. Before retreating into our sleeping bags—rated for below-freezing temperatures—we promised each other that we’d stoke the fire throughout the night.
I should have known better. I’ve read Jack London’s story “To Build a Fire.” They don’t always stay lit.
Around 1a.m., I opened an eye and saw an orange glow. The fire needed fuel, but I simply couldn’t leave my warm sleeping bag. By 3:13 a.m., another urge was upon me. My choices were stark: Either visit the outhouse, 100 chilly feet distant from the yurt, or remain awake until an even chillier dawn. So I leapt from the bed and hastily pulled on my warmest clothes. The fire was stone dead, as I would have been, if I didn’t hurry.
When I stepped out of the yurt it was breathtaking in two ways: First, the moon had set, so the star show was spectacular. Second, it was now -12 degrees, which my lungs complained about. I raced to the outhouse, took care of business, and sprinted back to my sleeping bag. A half-hour later I stopped shivering.
In the morning, my friend lit the stove again, for which I declared him my brother for life. After the yurt warmed a bit, I whipped up blueberry pancakes and sausages. I even brought condensed milk for our coffee. Later, we enjoyed a morning snowshoe and found deeply hollowed-out depressions in the snow, where moose had spent the night. I was so glad we’d slept indoors.
Which again made me extend gratitude to yurt pioneer William O. Douglas, who once wrote: “The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.”
Somebody oughta name a state forest state park after that guy.
Peter Moore is a writer and cartoonist living in Fort Collins. You can hear, and see, more of his work at KUNC.org.
