TeePee Time

Friday night's air was vibrating with drumming as the Ashdown Grove met for their monthly meditation night. Some stayed, some went home. Some stayed up and chatted, some tried to sleep but all were woken by the thunderstorms piercing daylight into the night. Invigorating, exciting, wet.

Saturday six adults and twho children woke with hearts lifted and bodies cooler - this is the hottest summer for many years with some of the highest temperatures recorded for July but today we had some reprieve from the heat in the damp woodland.

We started to clear the camp. First the tents were moved to a new location, and then some trees had to be felled and cleared to open up the clearing to about 20ft wide to allow for the teepee. Then the poles which were stripped some weeks ago were smoothed by removing remaining branches and knots. The day passed quickly and the four remaining adults decided to sleep in the temporary shelter for the night as it was to be taken down the next day. A drink unduced sleep followed.

Teepee Day: After struggling out of bed on Sunday morning, the shelter was dismantled and the ground prepared for the erection of the Teepee. None of us have experience or training on how to build teepees so this really was going to be a challenging day! A friendly face turned up just in time to help which made us five. So, with the three main poles tied together and the two parachute covers hooked over the top we started to raise the A-frame shape. We had put string loops around the parachutes to keep them from falling down the poles and swamping those beneath, however, this was quickly realised to be a mistake because once the frame was up, we couldn't release the parachutes to fall into place so we had to lower the whole structure again .

The second erection was going well and we got the structure stable again but his time the strings in the middle of the parachutes were restricting the chimney hole too much so we lowered the legs to try and get it low enough to cut the strings but in doing so one of the poles snapped and the structure gracefully fell to ground once more.

The third attempt, with a new pole tied in, worked without a hitch, and it only took four of us on that attempt too. Amazed and reinspired by our success we inserted all the other poles one by one around the structure, carefully knitting the tops in together. After adjustment of the legs in diameter we filled the clearing with the TeePee and the cross words, sweat and exhaustian were gone with a sigh of relief and an amazing sense of achievement.