Coralville Native Living the Small Life in Colorado

It’s pretty easy to picture Jonathan Williams in his tiny house in a campground at the base of a Colorado mountain, lying on his back, staring through the skylight just above his head.

“It’s my favorite spot,” says this young adventurer who grew up in Coralville.  “I can see the stars and the tree branches and it’s just a peaceful, cozy place in my home.”

At just 84 square feet, you might call the entire home fairly “cozy.”

Williams is a free spirit, an advocate of the outdoors and a proponent of living simply. You might remember my previous column about his amazing 5,000-mile bicycle journey from Mexico to Argentina.

After returning from that trek in March, he’s been leading white-water rafting trips in Colorado, plus teaching outdoor living skills through the National Outdoor Leadership School.  He expects to be employed with NOLS full time in the spring.

And he has been living in his tiny wooden house on wheels, a gift from his aunt Dee Williams of Portland, Oregon.  It’s a home he helped her build with reclaimed materials a few years ago.

Dee is an advocate of minimalistic living and wrote the book “The Big Tiny” which is described as part memoir and part how-to guide to tiny houses. When she recently decided to downsize — yes, downsize — to a 56-square-foot house as a “new challenge of minimalism,” she gave her original home to her nephew.

Read the full story here.