The indigenous tribes of Mongolia many centuries ago understood that a yurt should face south. Such geographical considerations are important. We have others to take into account. Such as positioning our yurt at least ten metres from the château. Any less distance results in the château’s shadow engulfing the yurt, thus interfering with our principle(d) system of time keeping.
At the yurt’s apex there is a hole to let out smoke. Importantly (for a solar time yurt) it also lets in light. Discrete pools of it, collecting upon a woven caravan of camels.
Koockie put down a Moroccan floor rug: one with camels traipsing across a desert landscape. They have a mirage like wobbliness. The weavers doing a great job at simulating the heat haze of North Africa. The camel motif is a stereotypical representation of the Maghreb; coloured burnt orange and yellow.
Unforgiving photons expose the flaws in the rug, unintended breaks in the pattern. A few of the camels are somewhat threadbare. ‘Alopecia afflicted,’ jokes Koockie in trying to hide his embarrassment for having self-imported a rug with imperfections.
Yurt time…
… is roughly calibrated. A gradually shifting splash of sunshine to reflect the passage of time.
NATURE NEVER KNOWINGLY DIVIDES EARTH INTO FULL HOUR DESIGNATIONS.
Morning, afternoon, evening: chunky segments of time; which meet our needs; roughly corresponding to breakfast, mid-day snack and ‘last light’ soup sip.
Inside solar yurt is a burning wood stove.
Attending to it in winter is a priority chore. Closing the damper on the stove pipe, closing down the back draft, opening up the side draft. The art is in the timing of these operations.
Done well and we bask in the warm yurt air, conjoined with cosmic time and drinking green tea that i confess to finding rather insipid. (i have a secret preference for Calculus’s antique PG Tips.)
In stifling hot summers the stove’s loading requires a gentler touch. Getting the splinters of wood to produce smoke yet yield little heat.
Yurt smoke, an oak scented dye in Time.
Time is light, light time.
The rising sun illuminates the embroidered ships of the desert, one after the other. Conversely the setting sun engulfs the wonky procession of beasts in shadow. The entire caravan eventually swallowed up whole, coinciding with the onset of night.
Even on cloudy days the yurt tracks time, the light is sufficient for the yurt to function. Its accuracy, however, is a moot point. Yurt dwellers who desire more accuracy are faced with an intractable problem: the sun’s proximity. It being too close to the Earth!
The Earth’s distance from the sun enables its environment to support life. Fortunately that distance was scarcely altered by Great Earth Wobble. It wouldn’t take much, however, in terms of the earth shifting from its current position in space, for the Earth to become completely uninhabitable. Even a slightly repositioning of the earth would have devastating consequences, causing mammalian blood to freeze in winter and boil in summer
At night the yurt records lunar time. An inferior mechanism. Moonlight being second-hand sunlight; luminance as opposed to radiance. On cloudy nights there is no lunar time to speak of. The moon obscured. The stars too; dead suns whose superior ‘time fixing’ light source we aren’t able to use.