Village
The Miracle of the Tiny Home Vacation
Getaway provides unalloyed connection with nature, our travel companions, and ourselves.
Text Natalie Rinn
Jon Staff, co-founder of Getawayâa startup that provides vacations in tiny homes deep in natureânoticed that we had lost the pockets of quiet, rest, and recharge that used to exist at the end of each workday. The internet had swallowed them up whole.
âI like my technology, and I like that I can work flexibly,â says Jon, a two-time Harvard graduate, âbut I donât like always being connected and able to talk to colleagues at 10 p.m.â Heâs on his cell phone, standing outside of a cafĂŠ in upstate New York. Not far from there, Jon and the Getaway staff are living in an abandoned lodge for the summer, on a plot of land where they plan to build yet another of the young companyâs small, rentable homes. In June 2015, Jon and his co-founder, Pete Davis, debuted the first Getaway house, The Ovida: a traditional family bunkhouse a couple of hours outside Boston that sleeps four, comes with bookshelves stocked with classic literature, board games, a heated shower, an electric toilet, and is equipped for any season. Two more tiny homes, The Lorraine and The Clara, followed shortly, and since this autumn, three more are available within easy driving distance of New York City. All tiny houses were 100 per cent booked for the first time months after Getaway launched, and have been 90Â per cent book ever since, have sold out from the moment they launched, says Jon with stupefaction. Clearly, this is the kind of vacation people didnât know they needed until they were told they could have it.

The idea for Getaway came to Jon as he travelled the American West for five months in an Airstream. He grew up in the Midwest and went to college in Massachusetts, but had long dreamed of exploring the oversized landscapes not present on the East Coast. While on the road, Jon spotted a tiny home. âI connected with it, and began observing this alternative form of housing as an interesting trend,â says Jon. âIt seemed like it could have an impact and reflect our generationâs values.â Jon began researching the tiny home movement to figure out how he could scale the concept into a business. The movement had been gaining traction for a while, yet until now it had been predominantly attainable only as a luxury option for homeowners. Jon reached out to Pete Davis, a friend from college, to bounce some ideas around. Together, they wondered: âCan we use tiny houses to quickly and affordably get away from the city, to do basically nothing at all, and none of the things we normally do that stress us out?â With the help of friends at Harvard Design School, they figured out a concept that allows a greater number of city-dwellers to get away from it all, on a modest budget, and without any of the excessive logistics commonly associated with vacation planning.
âIt was amazing. Here you have a bunch of people living in really small spaces but having the time of their lives, knowing each other, and looking after each other.â
The positive effects of alternative housing and connecting with nature are in Jonâs bones. He grew up in rural Minnesota and spent his summers living on a houseboat on Lake Superior. Jonâs parents put all their extra savings into the familyâs little floating lake home. They knew Jon was precocious, and felt comfortable leaving him with the lake community. âI lived in this marina with all these old mariners,â says Jon. âIt was amazing. Here you have a bunch of people living in really small spaces but having the time of their lives, knowing each other, and looking after each other.â Jonâs co-founder Pete comes from Falls Church, Virginia, which is famous for having âa small-town vibe,â Jon explains. As undergraduates at Harvard, both were assigned to Currier House, known for being âthe old and uglyâ dorm. The dormitory was divided up into small rooms and had only one entrance, which became a de facto social hub. âEverybody ran into everyone all the time,â says Staff. âThatâs how we met, actuallyâthrough architecture and a community centre.â I asked whether it was odd that two people with a passion for building better communities would pour their energies into constructing tiny homes isolated in nature. On the contrary, Jon insists. The interests are symbiotic. âJust because you care about community doesnât mean you donât need alone time, or to disconnect, or to recharge, and go into the woods with people you care about,â says Jon. âBeing in your city does not automatic-ally mean communityâquite the opposite.â Getaway homes, even more than an escape, are a medium for unalloyed connection. âI write to every guest after their stay and ask for feedback. I get stories about âI had this conversation with my partner and we hadnât talked like that in years,ââ Jon says with pride.
Initially, Jon and Pete expected Getaway to appeal to young, stressed-out professionals. In practice, it has struck a chord with nearly everyone. âIt encapsulates families, couples, groups of friends, older folks, younger folks, so itâs kind of across the board,â says Jon. âI called one guest from a rural area code and asked why he came. It was the same story: He said âI live in a rural place but my house is a mess and Iâm sick of my neighbourhood and I wanna get away from the kids and not worry for a couple of nights.ââ

Every inch of a Getaway home is designed to promote oneâs full presence with oneself, with housemates, and with nature. In their rudimentary materialsâno granite, no stainless steel, just rough-cut plywood, butcher blocks, and no internet (yes, thatâs right, no wifi)âsimplicity is the goal. âThere is electricity but not enough for a blow dryer,â Jon explains. âThe house is a piece of hardware that lets you be in nature.â And hereâs the best part: to dissuade type-A planners from making itineraries, the exact locations of the homes arenât revealed until just before departure. Are there any roadblocks that could make Getawayâs mission hard to achieve, looking for-ward into the future? Just one, says Jon: building enough tiny homes to meet demand. But based on his immense love for this project, and Jon and Peteâs team of talented designers and buildersâincluding Jonâs own father, who first showed him the magic that happens when tiny spaces, nature, and community all come togetherâthat shouldnât be a problem.
