We are a small Dutch family living in the mountains of Central Portugal. Last year we have worked incredibly hard to build a beautiful home. The design is inspired by a Mongolian ger (better known as yurt). With the help of many friends we have managed to realize our dream home from scratch.

We harvested all the wood locally and debarked and oiled all the 75 roof poles and the 192 wall poles. We went to Holland to get the skylight and bought a caravan as temporary living place. With this we drove back to Portugal but we took a detour via Switzerland to get special non treated wool made by an eco-company of an idealist father and son. We made our beautiful insulated deck and floor with local materials like cork, pine and chestnut. We organized a fantastic weekend where many friends came to help to 'knot' all the wall poles together. We set up the yurt at the end of the summer together with two families. A good friend made the roof-ring and the unique doors together with Floris. See pictures of the process of building here.

The week before the fires Floris made a very special wooden centerpiece with the shape of the sun. He bought wood and designed a deck in the shape of a moon and therefore we called our new home 'Solua'. Although the yurt was already set up for quite some time, there were always many details to finish before we could move in. The weekend of the fire we headed to Lisbon to get a family matrass, so we could move in the next week. And while we were there the fires started...

Our brand new yurt totally burned, with only a bit of structure of the chestnut beams and half a doorframe still standing. Pieces of metal and aluminum showed the left overs of all the tools Floris collected over the last years. Our temporary home, a beautiful 70's caravan which we got so fond of, also totally burned. Only some ceramic pots and the steel noses of our working boots could still be identified in the ashes. With this caravan we also lost quite a lot of personal items.

It was a blessing that we were away, while so many people were fleeing for their lives. We came back and were devastated by all the ruined land and houses. But we and all our friends and neighbors were alive and safe!

A few weeks have passed since the fires and we used this time to rest, mourn and clear our heads to be able to start thinking about the future. We have decided that we want to stay here with this immensely inspiring community and close to The Awakened Life Project. We want to rebuild our dream house so we can buy our family matrass and finally sleep on it to watch the stars! 

Please help us to do this. With your donations we will:

- get all the materials for our new yurt
- find a new caravan for a temporary place to stay
- replace lost tools to start building
- hire the help we need to build our yurt

Every little bit helps and if you can’t contribute financially it would mean a lot to us if you could share our story! 

With much love,

Lotte, Floris & Isa