Two Winters in a Tipi: My Search For The Soul Of The Forest

The author whisks you away to a life living in a tipi, connected to the natural world and it’s rhythms. Be careful reading, you may change your life.

Mark Warren is a naturalist and runs the Medicine Bow Wilderness School, where he teaches native American skills and natural science. But at heart, he's an artist, a composer of music and a really excellent writer. His memoir "Two Winters in a Tipi" reminds me of Thoreau's "Walden Pond" and also many books from the best of the nature writers of the Nineteenth Century. This book seems to be in a way, an anachronism. If it weren't for trucks, phones and other impedimentia of the 20th and 21st century, you could imagine this book from a century--or even two before our time.Warren begins the book with a catastrophic event: lightning strikes his house and set it afire. The tin roof acts like the lid of an oven, explains Warren. Everything is not only burnt--but actually melted, even the metal tools. But worse, his novel, his notebooks of compositions. All lost.Warren had been on a quest to buy land for his dream to set up a wilderness school. He takes this catastrophe and uses it as a springboard to find land to buy and along the way, decides to live in a tipi. The tipi cover he buys (mail ordering it from Colorado after another maker of tipis arrogantly tells him he won't buy one, doesn't want one, or won't sell it to him. An amusing scene.) The pole for the tipi, Warren cuts, scrapes and shapes those himself, musing that women are likely to make the cover as it requires sewing skills, and they would buy their poles. However, the description of how native American women softened, tanned, and shaped buffalo skins, and could erect a tipi in a half an hour is an amazing chapter. If you try to imagine yourself scraping skins with a sharp rock, then pounding buffalo brains into buffalo skin, and chewing the tough spots to make them supple, you come away with a feeling of awe. But even the cutting of the right sort of pine sapling and then using a vintage drawknife to remove the bark is nothing short of monumental in this age.The chapters where Warren creates and sets up his tipi home remind me of Thoreau. But this book is a lot more-it's a personal exploration, a discussion of the nature in the Piedmont woods of the Southeastern US, and insight into a very unusual man. I couldn't put this book down and I think it's one of the most unusual memoirs I've ever read. I came away totally amazed and strongly tempted to take a course in fire-making and bowcraft...not because I want to live in the woods but out of sheer admiration for what people have accomplished who've gone before us. I think this book would appeal not only to adults, but to children and teens, especially those who enjoy camping and scouting.

Over the years, I've bought three copies of this book, giving them to friends as gifts. I've read the book at least five times, and make a point to re-read it every year. It is so rich in life lessons and perspective, not just what it's like to live in a tipi, though it's that too. Humanity (and the natural world) would be so much better off if everyone spent a year or two living in a tipi like this. Packed with beauty, nature, and good humor this well written book is easy to fall in love with, as is the forest he writes about. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Mark Warren is a naturalist who taught outdoor skills, and so much more, to all ages.  He wanted to teach respect, appreciation and love for the outdoor world, animals and plants.  His work included elementary school programs as well as senior citizens and all ages in between.  Most of the book takes place in the forests of north Georgia in the U.S.After completing his undergraduate work, Warren was accepted into medical school.  He called the school and said he wouldn't be showing up because he had changed his mind.  However he still had some scientific training which he took to the woods with him and that is one of the things that made the story fun for me.  Warren told the usual tale of becoming one with the world and running with the deer, but then gave some of scientific explanation for it, which I always think is fun.  For example when he talked about trees communicating with each other he talked about some research in that area.  He said that it had been found that when a tree was ill or was experiencing an infestation of insects for examples, the trees surrounding it responded by going into a self-defense mode.  Can't remember the details and have NO biology knowledge, but the trees pulled something in their leaves back into itself, the harder part of itself, making the tree less vulnerable.  So Warren gives some explanation for what used to be considered old wives tales or new age gobbledygook and I always love it when I come across that kind of info.When Warren's rental home in the woods burnt down, he decided to try living in a tipi and did so for two years.  There is a lot of detail about building tipis and how they function that I found a little tiresome, and yet I had wondered about some of those things.  Smoke, for example, problems with rain and other things were explained and was interesting.There is also information about the Cherokee and their relationship with the world and with the government.  I  spent yesterday afternoon in the Anasazi Center in Cortez, CO and just left feeling so sad.  It is a wonderful BLM museum, but I was just so struck by one particular photo that was described as being taken during the American Occupation.  Something about that terminology and the reality of it struck deeper.  The only place that made me more sad than that was Little Big Horn.You can see there is a lot of variety in this book and it is a quick and interesting read.

I am a nature guide in South Africa. I read this book numerous times. Every time I take something new from it. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Really interesting read.

This is one book anyone interested in the outdoors needs to read. Not as a guide to plant identification or techniques for tracking game but as a guide on how to learn about oneself and our relationship to the land. This book is beautifully written and Mark Warren has given a piece of himself so we can better understand ourselves.

Loved it - very informative !