1 August 2011
The Story of the first tipi
It all started when I was working as a summer counselor one year up at a camp in the country. We needed a new arts and craft for the week and I dug through arts and crafts until I stumbled upon this old encyclopedia set from the 1960's. It was faded and old and I reached down and randomly grabbed on book. I opened it up and within a few pages there was "How to build your own scaled tipi for kids to play in."
I was overjoyed We told them we were building a 14' tipi because that's what the book said and we told all the kids to sign up. The activity was at the end of the week and so we got lots of kids to sign up. Meanwhile, my buddy Jerimiah and I gathered supplies. The only things we could find to use were duct tape and old curtain samples.
We got to work late the night before the activity and we taped out the shape on the floor. I'm not very good at math and neither of us knew how to sew and so we did our best and worked late into the night.
The next day 15 kids showed up to the activity and we had them all sit down and think of a name for their new-formed tribe while we read out of the book how to set it up. When we got the tipi skirt tied on and he stood up, we found out it was too short. We had to saw the long 15' poles we had spent the previous day looking for. When it was finally buildt it stood maybe 5 feet. We got all 15 kids indside and had to squeeze to fit.
Since then I have progressed along finding the right door heights, materials, and even adding windows. But I have never forgotten the magic and joy that comes with building something together.
Today I work as a Recreation Leader at a park site and we set them up on a regular basis. People slow down their cars on the roads that pass nearby to look in wonder at the different colors and we get lots of the public to come out and sit and play in them with their kids. They transform the landscape of a park into a place of imagination.