Willimantic, Now & Then
Well, those bamboo trees, so beautifully straight and green, made the whole idea seem possible. Dave and Elizabeth’s little bamboo patch, despite how anxious they were for us to cut it back, wasn’t really going to the do the trick. I could see there were a couple poles long enough for our tipi, but not many.
By Mark Svetz
WILLIMANTIC –November 2009
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Tipi and Hot Tub:
Ideas for Living!
We came back from North Carolina this summer with two ideas and 20 bamboo poles tied to the top of our van. The poles were more than a great image heading north on I-81; they were central to both ideas. In fact they were the linchpin that let the whole idea start rolling.
During the last year he and Elizabeth and a friend brought that idea to a beautiful reality.
They built a sweet little cabin (10 by 14 feet – the maximum allowed in Asheville without a building permit!), set in their back yard, behind the garden, next to the creek. This is all in downtown Asheville! Sarah and I were inspired.
Now, the cabin was a delight, but if anything could trump a cabin in the back yard, for me, it would be a cabin with a hot tub next to it!
Elizabeth had a great idea about the tub. She got a galvanized steel stock tank, set it up on blocks to make room for a fire under it, and there you have it – a hot tub! We resolved to get one and set it up as soon as we got home!
We talked about this a little, and Dave had an idea about a bigger bamboo grove down the street behind a burned-out supermarket. He thought no one would care if we took a bunch of poles from this grove.
We got a couple of saws, then Sarah, Dave and I bundled into our van and we went to the vacant lot downtown.
The next day we headed north for home, with these poles on the roof, hanging off the front and rear of the van. It was a beautiful sight.
Once home, I got the poles off the van and tied them into the familiar cone in the back yard. Now, we just had to figure out how to make the cover, and we were in business.
Maybe this is a good time to stop and consider: Why a tipi?
Well, for me, a tipi is one idea for affordable, portable and easy to make housing. This has always been a dream of mine, since my days of building forts from grape vines and fern boughs.
I come from a culture and a time in which people often built their own houses. When I was a child, I would spend weekends playing with cousins while our parents repaired or built new houses for some family member. I love the idea that somebody would need a new roof and all my uncles and aunts would show up for a day of climbing, hammering, swearing and drinking. By the end of the day, the job would, more or less, be finished.
I don’t have a lot of cousins around any more, so I have set my sights on less labor-intensive structures I can build by myself. I built a motorcycle “garage” out of 2x4s from the old back-stock shelf at the Willimantic Food Co-op when we moved to a new store a few years ago.
The tipi has long been my dream house, not only because we can do it ourselves, but also, I think, because it recalls a time and culture when humans lived more in harmony with the world. Also, we needed a place to hang our robes when we get in the hot tub!
We got some canvas. I sewed some of the strips together to make a sheet large enough to draw a half circle with a diameter about 28 feet across. The center of that diameter becomes the top of the tipi, with the two halves of the diameter meeting on one side and the half circle wrapping around the cone formed by the poles. The outer edge of the circle is the round bottom of the tipi. We tried it first with twigs and a napkin!
Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter own Clothworks, a shop on Church Street in Downtown Willimantic, where they make and sell clothing and bags. Often they daydream about the hot tub while they sew!
This is probably the most awe-inspiring part of he story for me. This grove was really not much bigger than a modest public library, but it was a different world from the hustle of Charlotte Street so close by. These tall, straight green trunks, growing so close together were beautiful. I could imagine myself a tiny creature in a huge field of grass!
We went to work, and in no time at all we had 25 of these poles tied to the roof of the van and were bumping our way back out to the street and home to Dave and Elizabeth’s house.
Our tipi now stands in our back yard. It is a small one – only 14 feet across the floor, and about 12 feet tall in the center. We made the door too big, and we still need to trim one side, since the whole thing is a little off round.
But we have a tipi, part of what I call the Last Resort and Spa. We got a stock tank and Sarah and I can have a hot tub anytime we gather a few sticks from the yard, build a fire, and wait for the water to get hot and the smoke to subside. We were sitting in it one night when a skunk came wandering past.
We now enjoy The Last Resort and Spa regularly. It’s almost like taking ourselves back to our summer vacation any time we want. What great ideas!
11:9TipiLiving
We were in Asheville, visiting our friends Dave and Elizabeth. Dave, who lived around Willimantic for 10 years or so, a while back, has had an idea for a cabin in his back yard.
Now, Dave and Elizabeth also have a small, but growing, bamboo patch next to their house. Sarah and I had been thinking about a Tipi for many years. I had cut a bunch of standing dead trees from the woods, a few years back, but we never got to the next step, which is studying and designing a canvas tipi cover.
In fact, those old dead poles laying across the concrete blocks in our back yard were an accusation. Why hadn’t we ever made that tipi?
