andri nyc's video: Living in a Tipi at Durango Colorado

The beauty goes far deeper than appearances. The circle is an organic, healing shape, powerful medicine for anyone who has been shut up in rectangles for half a lifetime. Contact with the earth is not a metaphor in a tipi. When I sit down I can feel the skin of our mother under my bum. I look up and see the circle of poles reaching up into the air to meet the patch of sky through the smoke hole. In the center of the circle, the flames of an open fire dance their dance of life. From where I’m pitched I can hear the gurgle of a nearby stream falling asleep to the sound on a quiet evening. A tipi is a highly practical way to live outside. In fact, with a tipi beauty and practicality are one and the same. The idea of something being useful but ugly, or beautiful but useless, is largely a product of our unbalanced industrial society. A tipi is strong, roomy, weatherproof, easy to pitch and above all has a fire inside. It was developed by the people of the great plains of North America, and it is hard to improve on a structure that has enabled people to thrive in such a harsh environment. We live in a society, which is out of balance. The intellect is glorified over emotion and intuition; material wealth is emphasized to the point where it becomes the main aim in life; humans are cut off from all other living beings on earth - which are patronizingly lumped together under the heading of 'nature'. Living outside can redress this balance, without rejecting what is good in our culture, and there is no better way of living outside than in a tipi.