Guest Post by Daphne Shapiro
I knew that I wanted to move into that round cabin in a field from the moment I saw the ad on Craigslist.
At 500 square feet, it was the smallest place I had ever lived in. It was round, like a yurt, but built like a house, with windows all around and two sets of doors to the outside. A big skylight dominated the ceiling. The cabin had a colorful past, having been used not only for housing, but also as a recording studio and at one point, for professionally-run seances. I hadn’t a clue how to furnish this round room so I went on the web and researched “yurts.”
I decided that I liked the way the Mongolians handled the situation. In those yurts, the middle of the room was taken up by a big stove and all the furniture was pushed against the edges of the room with the beds doubling as seating during the day. I didn’t have a big stove in the middle of the room, but I liked the idea of being efficient with whatever I did bring to the yurt, so I immediately sold my sofa and arranged the rest of my furniture around the perimeter, Mongolian-style, leaving an open space in the middle. That area under the skylight ended up doubling as a personal yoga studio, a guest room where I could put the blow up mattress, a larger space to move the dining table out when I had people over to eat or as a place to put extra chairs when friends were hanging out. The middle space with nothing in it became the most used and most useful area in the cabin.
The tiny bathroom was the only private room. It looked out on a field and had a Lilliputian shower tucked into one corner. The kitchen was built against one of the walls and consisted of several cabinets, a miniature counter top and refrigerator and stove. I did my laundry in a shed across a small field where an ancient washer and dryer were located. My bike and a couple of extra plastic containers were stashed in a barn at the back of the property. The electricity, plumbing and internet access came with the property and was included in the rent. Heating for the yurt, the cook stove, and the water were my responsibility and came from propane tanks.
My one job on the property was to pull the garbage and recycling bins down the long driveway to the road once a week. My first time was a Monday night, a few days after I moved in. It was a moonless night in January and by the time I got home from work, it was very, very dark. I grabbed my camera and took some spooky shots with my flash and posted them on Facebook. The very next morning, a friend of mine arrived at my office with the flashlight and strict instructions to use it for future night-time garbage runs!
A week after moving in, I was unexpectedly diagnosed with 4th stage cancer. As I stumbled through months of diagnosis, of chemo and of recovery, I ended up wandering the fields daily and ultimately taking almost 2,000 photos of the land, the flowers, the birds and animals, the sky. Most of the photos are not much good. I was on drugs, after all! But the act of photography kept me sane.
The round cabin in the field was a beautiful, remarkable place to live during that time of my life. I spent a fair amount of time in bed and from the window by my head I could see the sun rise and from the window across the room I could see the sun set. On full moon nights, the moonbeams would shine onto my face and wake me up when it passed over the skylight. During the day, I could watch birds fly overhead and chase acorns around the skylight’s edge. When it stormed, the rain, the wind, and the flying tree branches would crash against the walls, the windows and roof, but I was safe inside this little pod. Where else but in that round house in the field could all those miracles be possible?
At one point during chemo, I became so ill that I had to leave the country for two months and be taken care of in the city. I tried not to think about my round cabin too much during that time. When I was finally able to come back – cured for now – I decided to return alone. I walked back into the cabin and immediately opened all the doors and windows. I turned off my phone and spent that first night back listening only to the wind in the trees.
Even then, I knew that this new, post-cancer life of mine would probably require leaving the cabin in the field. During my last few months of recovery, I memorized the views outside of every window, especially the one by the head of my bed, where I would watch the sunrise, the wild turkeys, the deer, the squirrels, the birds, and the branch of the oak tree that overhung the roof. I wanted to make sure that every time I closed my eyes, I would be able to re-create that view for the rest of my life. At the end of my lease in December of 2011, I did move out and came back to live in town. On the rare occasions that I return to visit, my feet navigate the fields with more confidence than my eyes. Will I ever come back there to live? Probably not to that place, but most likely to a place much like it.