Featured Editorial

Me, Nick the dog, and a Tipi…

I lived in a Tipi year-round for three years in West Virginia. The timbers were hand cut from eastern hardwood; not what our western plains Indians used, which were predominantly lodge pole pine. Mine were thicker at the base and much heavier, but super solid in any weather.

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

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

The deck supported a 24′ long picnic table, roofed, and spec’d with gas light fixtures, a two burner gas range, a single burner water boiler, and a double bowl kitchen sink with running water. I hauled water in a 'farm use only' 1965 CJ5 Jeep in 55-gallon barrels from the local spring.

A refrigerator was built into the floor under the kitchen area. It was an old 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. Temperature was controlled with home-made block ice in buckets in the campground ICE dispenser. I had a key and 24-hour access. Three buckets went into the bottom of the freezer, covered over with boards with the food 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 was fully extended there was just enough room to walk around it with the fireplace crackling at your feet. The stove could burn ten hours long stuffed and shut down. A huge bonus coming home to a warm Tipi at night buried three feet deep in snow. It happened!

This was home while ski patrolling, raft guiding and teaching kayaking on the New and Gauley Rivers in West Virginia for many 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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