The Teepee

As a child, I laid great stock in the quality of a backyard, the ratio of lawn to woods, the types of trees, the navigability of the forest floor. My best friend was named Brianna, a flaxen-haired girl whose squeals of delight became a permanent scowl as she grew older, an angelic face turned hard and bitter by chlorine and domestic discord. In her efforts to become an Olympic-grade swimmer, her body grew lean and hard, her hair turned green, and our friendship deteriorated. But oh, the glory of those early days. A lawn with brittle grass, peppered with acorns stretched from the back of her cape-cod style house. The siding was a warm, streaked gray, the inside crisp, clean white. A woodpile formed a wall on one side of the yard, perpetually occupied by wasps buzzing in and out of its dark recesses on their way to treachery. In Laura Ashley dresses with peter pan collars and paisley prints, we darted into the forest to disappear for hours. As houses cropped up around hers we collected felled trees to build a teepee. It was important that they were fir trees. We preferred white pine, the needles still green for having been so close to life. Is it a fir? Make sure it’s a fir, we would ask each other. We considered each limb, carefully inspecting it for the criteria we’d established; 3 to 4 inches in diameter, 15 to 25 feet long, supple but not too flexible. We would then drag it down the dirt road to prop it up against a giant pine tree, slowly amassing the conical shape of a teepee. We were wild. It was our primitive hut. One day, creeping along the forest floor, we discovered a crippled foundation. Huddled behind the wall, our small hands resting on the round stones protruding from the mortar, Brianna pointed to an animal, its hair bristly and tan. It had pointy ears and a short, stubby tail. Briana may have whispered, “It’s a bobcat!” but it’s unlikely she knew what we were observing. We became very still, very hushed, and suddenly very afraid. First, there was the matter of the creature’s size. It seemed large because we were small. It was on the prowl, we could see that, it’s nose lowered to the ground, following some invisible, scented path. This muscled animal had speed and power, we could tell. We sunk into the foundation and turned our backs to the creature. We waited. When we thought it was safe we peered over the edge. All we could see were patches of sky filtering through the branches, birds flitting about. We tiptoed back to the house and told her parents what we had seen. They smiled at our fear and were slightly astonished that we’d witnessed such a rare sight.Brianna and I worked all summer on that teepee. It’s apex lay far above our heads. Her mother Maureen would call for us at lunch time and feed us lentil soup in pink bowls that looked like roses. She always added cubes of tofu that bobbed up to the surface. She served us small salads with Italian dressing and a dollop of cottage cheese. She must have thought we needed all the extra protein we could get considering our unique choice of activity which was in fact, hard labor. Brianna and I were both vegetarians who grew to be big girls with strong bones. It was always our plan to spend one night in the teepee upon its completion. We left a small, triangular opening which served as an entrance and we began collecting the soft branches of fir trees and laying them down, creating what we imagined would be a soft bed. The long needles of the white pine mingled with the short needles of a different conifer. When we felt we had laid down a sufficient bed of boughs, we went inside for dinner. Dusk fell, we went back outside and surveyed our work, the dark mass of the teepee appearing as if it had always been there, a structure native to that very spot. We liked how you couldn’t see in. But once inside, the light entered in shafts and you could spy on the surroundings through the cracks. We entered the teepee, one after the other. The scent of pine was thick and rich. Droplets of sap trickled down the sides. We circled our spots like animals nestling in for the night. And when we lay down, we got right back up again, our bones already aching from the hard ground.