How to setup a Tipi
Zen and I took a road trip to Maine to visit some friends of mine who own a small farm. They have an annual weekend get together for family and friends and this year they wanted to add a little something different - an authentic tipi (and for the record, this one is *not* made of animal skins).
The tipi came complete with cover, liner, door, ropes, lacing pins, and tie-down pebbles.
We sat around for the better part of an hour, catching up and drinking coffee (sweetened with maple syrup). I think the real reason for all the talking and coffee was to avoid starting to read the instructions!
We finally moved all the tipi poles out to the site. Fortunately for me, my friends had already cut the your trees, removed the limbs and bark, dried and coated the poles. I only needed to help transport them to the field. The 15 poles that make up the frame and the smoke flaps are between 16′ and 20′ each.
The instructions were very technical and hard to visualize. This is one of those tasks that is very easy to teach someone by showing them and nearly impossible to teach by writing it all down. The instructions say; “The first time we attempted to put up a tipi, it took us more than five hours before we were satisfied.” It took us about three and a half hours. I’m guessing a 15 minute video would compress that to under and hour.
When we finished, we were quite happy (and a bit surprised) that the results very much looked like a tipi and were solid and stable. BTW - Zen was the first to sleep in the tipi. She settled in as we were tightening up the cover and even before the inner liner was installed <snooze>.
I was impressed with some of the techniques used to fasten parts together. If you remove common “modern” solutions like grommets, zippers, tie-downs, etc. the original tipi used some very ingenious methods. For example, there are small wooden sticks (dowels today) that lace the cover above the door. These lacing pins make a very strong connection and are easy to use and replace if one were to be lost or broken. (You can see the lacing sticks running vertical in the picture of the door.) I was also impressed that there was no need to stand on anything during the process - no ladders here ! The last and perhaps most ingenious trick was how to anchor the liner to the ground - pebble ties. Here again, a picture is worth more than a 1000 words. Fortunately, the manufacture supplies a piece of scrap cover already tied with a pebble. (You can see a pebble tie along the bottom of the picture of the door.) The result is stronger than any grommet and does not require a hole in the liner material.
It was great to catch up with old friends and to accomplish something pretty “organic” at the same time.
Thanks guys for extending such warm hospitality. Zen and I had a wonderful time !
