Lessons from inside a Tipi

There is a notable difference between how people used to react when I told them that I currently live in a tipi, and how they react now, when I say that I lived in one. As if I have returned to the realm of sanity and they can now entertain the notion of having anything in common with me at all! That we lived in a tipi for two years has them itching with need to see cracks in my smile, confessions that it had all been a bad idea, a momentary lapse in reason!

Sometimes you just need a change. A radical, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of change! We needed to feel the earth, the seasons, to know what the moon was doing, to no longer have walls between us and our world, to sleep outside. A friend offered us her tipi, and we packed our bags, and started giving things away.

Living in a tipi is very much like living on a sail boat! You’re always turning the flaps to the wind. It was hard constant work. But I had started to feel like a domesticated cat, and I needed to know that I could fend for myself out in the wild!

It made me much stronger and I developed skills that I now take for granted, that I never thought I’d need, like making fire, using a cordless drill, securing loose ropes on my own in hurricane weather with the rain beating down on me in the middle of the night, sick kids inside and a fireplace that won’t stop smoking!

What did I learn in those two years?

-Having fireflies flapping through your kitchen at night when you switch the lights off to go to bed is cool!

-Rain spiders are not poisonous.

-Outside showers rock, no matter the weather.

-Community grows when someone is in need.

-You are tougher than you think.

-A view of the stars from your bed on a clear warm night through the open flaps of a tipi needs to be experienced at least once in your lifetime.

-We are better designed to sit on the floor than on chairs.

-Wet things dry.

-It’s important to understand your cycles and the planet’s cycles. When you fight against your natural context instead of understanding it, you put your body under stress and you stop coping.

-Kids like tipis!

-Life is simple.

-When you stop hiding for cover behind walls and windows, you find a humbleness in the face of the enormous natural elements of this planet which forever helps you to make decisions based on them instead of just yourself.

-Living in a tipi taught me to not take any comforts for granted. We de-consumerized ourselves and down-scaled without feeling deprived or lacking and we've never turned back.  

Do I miss living in a tipi? Nope! Would I take it back, given the chance? What do you think!?