Featured Editorial

Me, Nick the dog, and a Tipi…

I lived in this year-round for three years in West Virginia. In two different spots. I hand cut the timbers from eastern hardwood; not what western plains Indians used which were predominantly lodge pole pine. Mine were thicker at the base and much heavier.

This home was awesome. I don’t use that word often but it truly applies.

The Tipi was 18’ in diameter, placed on a 24’x24′ wood deck built on a steep slope, with steps leading up from ground level into the Tipi.

The deck supported a 24′ long picnic table, roofed, and spec’d with gas lighting fixtures every six feet, a two burner cook range, a large water boil burner, and double bowl kitchen sink with running (gravity fed) water. I hauled water with a 'farm use only' 1965 Jeep CJ5, in 55-gallon food grade drums from a local spring.

A refrigerator was built into the floor under the kitchen area. It was a chest freezer buried in the ground, under the deck, at deck level. You had to get on your hands and knees to lift the deck door which opened the freezer hood to access the Fridge.

The fridge temperature was controlled with self-made block ice, in galvanized buckets, in the campground store ICE dispenser. I had a key and 24-hour access. Three buckets of ice went into the bottom of the freezer, covered with boards with the food set on top. The fridge was good for a week without having to change ice. Amazingly efficient.

The Tipi was modified for a wood stove. The stove had glass doors and a screen-cover to enjoy the open fire. When the futon couch was extended there was just enough room to walk around it with the fireplace crackling at your feet.

The stove could burn ten hours stuffed and shut down, a huge bonus coming home to a warm Tipi at night in the winter, buried three feet deep in snow. It happened!

This was home while ski patrolling and guiding on the New and Gauley Rivers in West Virginia for several years.

There were a few parties!

Raised bed gardening, wining and dining, and four-season creek boating were a thing.

If you don't know creek boating, picture tossing sticks in your back yard creek when it was flooding, and watching those sticks get pummeled, yet, miraculously, come though at the bottom unscathed. Creek boating is to kayaking what sticks are to this scenario. Controlled chaos. Whitewater kayaking. The reason I moved to WV. Year round creek boating.

Thank you for reading.

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