Two Winters in a Tipi

My Search for the Soul of the Forest

by Mark Warren

One stormy August night while he was away, a lightning bolt struck Mark Warren's tin-roofed farmhouse and burned everything to the ground. Even his metal tools melted. Friends loaned him a tent, but after just a month it began to break down--which Warren vowed not to do. He decided to follow a childhood dream and live in a tipi. Excitement stirred in his chest, and so began a two-year adventure of struggle, contemplation, and achievement that brought him even closer to the land that he called home. More than just the story of one man, TWO WINTERS IN A TIPI gives the history and use of the native structure, providing valuable advice, through Warren's trial and error, about the parade of confrontations that march toward a tipi dweller. It shows, without thumping the drum of environmental doom, how you can go back to the land--for two days or two years. The wild plants that Natives harvested for food and medicine still grow nearby. The foods still nourish; the medicines still heal. As Warren beautifully reveals, the wild places of the past still exist in our everyday lives, and living that wilderness is still a possibility. It's as close as the river running through your city, the woods in your neighborhood, or even the edges of your own backyard.

244 pp — ©2012