The year was 2001. David and Saskia Vanderhoop of Aquinnah were in the process of building their house and needed a place to stay. “The previous few winters had been relatively mild,” recalls David, “so I thought we could just live in our teepee.”
The winter of 2001-2002 turned out to be one of the most severe on record, but David and Saskia and their two children, Evan Hall and Nanauwe, who were eleven and five years old at the time, not only survived, they liked it so much the family went on to spend the next two years living in their teepee.
Perhaps you’re not ready to make such a radical move as the Vanderhoops, but spending time in a teepee of your own, even just overnight, is a great way to connect both with your family and with nature – and a teepee is not all that difficult to build.
You begin with the frame. For a teepee about twelve feet wide, you’ll need a dozen fourteen-foot poles. The poles should be about two-and-a-half inches thick at the base, and taper to about one inch at the top. David and Saskia used the trunks from pine trees they had limbed, debarked, sanded, and treated with linseed oil, but you can get yours from a lumberyard. Have six spruce two-by-fours ripped, so each two-by-four yields two lengths, one-and-a-half inches thick at one end and about two-and-a-half inches at the other. Then just plane down the edges.
The Vanderhoops had a clever way of erecting the pole structure.
“You lay three poles on the ground so they form a three-pointed star,” explains Saskia, “and then you lash them together loosely where the ends meet using a long piece of rope. Then, while one person lifts up the center of the frame, the other person walks away, pulling the rope. If the two poles nearest the person pulling the rope are fixed in the ground, they will pivot upwards and the whole structure will rise up. You then take several turns around the poles with the rope to secure them.”
Next, eight additional poles are added in the spaces between the three original poles – with three new poles in the first two spaces and two in the last. (You’ll have one pole left over, which you should save for raising the canvas.) After each of the additional groups of poles are added, make more turns of the rope where the poles intersect to hold them in place.
To cover the teepee, you’ll need about a twelve-foot-by-twenty-four-foot sheet of eight-ounce canvas. The material should be cut in a half circle, the radius being about twelve feet, which is the distance from the bottom of one of the poles to where the poles intersect; also cut the straight edge of the canvas with a tab that comes out about six inches and extends about six feet along the edge from one end – this will be used to fasten the two sides once you wrap the canvas around the poles.
Next cut two semicircles two feet from each end of the straight length of canvas; they should be about two feet in diameter and one-and-a-half feet deep. These will form a rounded door when the canvas is wrapped and overlapped around the frame.
You should also make a double row of grommet holes along the tab, each hole one-and-a-half inches from its mate, and each pair five inches from the next pair. Then cut a corresponding row of holes on the other end of the flat side of the canvas that will line up with the holes on the tab when the canvas is wrapped around the frame. These holes will be used for securing the two ends of the canvas together.
David explains the easiest way to raise the canvas: Make a grommet hole at the top and center of the curved side of the canvas and run a piece of clothesline through it. Tie the line to one end of the remaining pole and raise up the pole so that the canvas comes up too. Leave the pole up for further support.
“The canvas can get pretty heavy,” says Saskia, “and you’ll probably need a few people to help put it in place – it’s hard to imagine how the Plains Indians did it with buffalo skins.”
To enclose the tent, carry the two ends of the canvas around till they overlap and lace them together by running fifteen-inch wooden pegs through the grommet holes on each side of the canvas where the flaps overlap; you can use dowels or thin straight branches that have the bark removed. You can also create a canvas flap to cover the door and similarly lace it to the tent with wooden pegs.
When it came time to move into their new house, it was the Vanderhoops’ daughter, Nanauwe, then eight years old, who had the hardest time making the adjustment.
“Living in a teepee, you’re tapping into energy that’s old,” Saskia explains. “Over the course of evolution, this is how we lived. So basic, so close to nature – there’s a painfulness when you step out of it.”
David and Saskia Vanderhoop run Sassafras Earth Education in Aquinnah, an environmental education organization for the understanding and appreciation of the natural world. www.sassafrasmvy.org.
