By the Shores of Gitche Gumee

Let me tell you about living in a tipi. It’s really great. I’m really connected with nature, which is something that I truly appreciate. The grass growing inside my domicile is a constant reminder that I am on planet earth; I really KNOW that I am a being, surrounded by beings, existing on a being. Oh no… we’re getting too existential for so early in this post. Let’s step back a little bit. The grass growing in my tipi makes me laugh every morning. I mean, really, have you ever had grass growing in your house? It’s great! Even a tent has that capsule feel where you know dirty old nature can’t mess with your civility. I get out on multi-day hikes and mmmm, “I just love the dirt and the grime and all those plants and animals and bugs, but really, please, can I just have a moment to myself so I can clean my fingernails? All these mozzies (Kiwi for mosquitos; coincidentally [?] rhymes with Ozzies) and sand flies are just too much, I need a break.” But in a tipi, nope, the bottom of the encapsulating canvas is 20 cm off the ground, the smoke flap is the open gateway to the stars, and the door is a swatch of canvas weighted down by two sticks. The injins, er I mean Native Americans, usually used some kind of woven reeds or animal skins for the flooring, but here in the 21^st century, I use a combination of astro turf and carpet. Isn’t the synthetic future amaaaaazing? On a massive side note, if anybody was talking about “red skins” and they didn’t mean the NFL team, I might find that quite despicable. And yet I readily call certain white people rednecks; you’re probably just like me. Isn’t that funny? Let’s reflect together for a moment. Anyway, them old injins also generally had fires in their tipis for warmth, but it being New Zealand with their stringent quasi-British laws, open fires are not allowed. So it’s just me, the astro turf, and the grass (the juxtaposition to end all time). But there’s more! Every morning, I have this fly friend, who isn’t really a friend, but more of a frienemy, who flies on in at 6:20 AM and then flies about in meaningless circles. Excuse my immature valley speak, but, like, WTF are you doing man? Why are you even up so early? Have you heard about the early bird? He eats more than worms, my friend. Get out of here, go home! No, no, he came in through the smoke flap and he’s just fly flying around, buzzzz, for no particular reason beside the fact that he can. Most of the time it’s just circumnavigations of the inner tipi perimeter, but sometimes he takes a momentary break for a site-specific-survey. Sometimes this survey takes place on my face, which is when I explode. Ok, I can look at Mr. Fly as a funny part of my routine: Oh he’s just flying about, he has no concept of considerations for other beings, but OMG GET OFF MY FACE!! It’s the 4 square inches that I want to consider mine, can you please GTFO. But my explosion only creates further interest in my face. “Ohh,” says Mr. Fly, “This place is forbidden… maybe I can just…just…just sneak up on it and…” GO! Get out of here! Fly away! You have a whole dang monastery to fly around in, why do you want my face??!! Every morning, same story. But to be honest, what am I complaining about? I would have to get up at 6:45 AM anyway. Its only 20 minutes. But I take it so personally. A fly on my face; its mine! But what’s mine? What is I, me, mine? Let’s reflect….

Ok snap back. I want to assure you this isn’t a complaint rant. My words seem cynical, but really I love living in the tipi. If I didn’t love it, I would move out; no problem, I could be staying in a nice wooden hut or a metal caravan totally sealed off from the elements. But I take that nature walk every night on down to my canvas A-frame, and my pillow is usually a bit damp, but I lay my head down and I have super sweet dreams every night. Except when there’s a possum party going on. Oh man, those possums really know how to party. Maybe I’ve told you that these are not the same possums we have in the States. They’re quite a bit cuter… so cute you might say, “Awww,” with three W’s. But don’t be fooled, they’re little devils. I’m living next to a pond right now, which is actually really awesome for many reasons. One of those reasons is that nobody has lived down there before, so the nature is pretty natural. Every night when I approach my home I make a friendly, very loud announcement: “I am home creatures! Time for bed! Go to your home, you cannot stay in mine!” This usually creates quite a tussle. I don’t know how many creatures are living in my area, but there has got to be at least 10 family dramas going on around me, not to mention the lone travelers; I know I’ve seen no less than 4 species of animals all living in or around the pond. But the possums are the wackiest of them all. Similar to Mr. Fly, I sense no method to their madness. They’re scavengers, so they’re used to picking around without having a specific goal, and the tipi is no exception. Thankfully, I have not had any full intrusions that I know of. There is a lot of testing the boundaries though. It all started with a bit of rooting around the perimeter, digging up the rocks and shifting through the bushes. I realize I’m in their environment, so I kept to myself and let them root around. Then I started hearing the possums brushing up against the outside canvas, but this only really happened when they were walking by, so I continued to let it pass. Finally, one night as I arrived home, I saw a possum climbing up one of the poles! That’s a little too far-- I’ll let the things go about their business, but what business might a possum have on top of my tipi? Mischief. That’s all. So I told that possum to get off of there and gave the pole a good shake until he slipped off and scampered away. It was quiet for the rest of that night, but ever since then I’ve been getting a lot of possum visits from above. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can hear two or three possums shimmying up and down the poles (and may I remind you: for no apparent reason!). It’s not that big of a deal for them to climb around, aside from the fact that they wake me up, but my biggest fear is that one night I’m going to have an overly-curious varmint fall through the smoke flap into the tipi itself, and then I’ll have a big problem on my hands. They’re not vicious or anything, but they have an instinctual love for purposely pooping on man’s finest and most frequently used inventions (trash can lids, hand rails, the middle of the porch, benches, window sills, etc), so I don’t even want to imagine the places they would want to poop in my tipi. Then there’s always the tendency for other possums to follow the example of their stupid friends. Long story short, when I hear a possum climbing up one of my tipi poles, I get out the stern voice and try to sound like I mean business: “Hey! Get down! Don’t make me come out there!!”… but this is quickly losing its effectiveness. Oh, those possums.

So aside from the fly and the possums, and a few other noise making creatures around the pond, the tipi is very peaceful and serene. Nobody ever comes down there, and there are very few vantage points where I can even been seen. The pond and the surrounding narrow valley keep the humidity in, so I stay warmer than everybody else at night, and it never gets very windy. In the evening, the swallows swoop around the pond and catch bugs and the frogs line the shore and croak at one another. A very contemplative place, and I even sometimes feel like, dare I say, old Henry Thoreau. Yeah, other than coping with a few strange creature habits, it’s not so bad. Oh, except when it rains. It’s summer here, so it doesn’t rain too much, but we had a big storm about 2 weeks ago. I woke up in a puddle. I thought waking up to grass in my house was weird… a puddle was not just surprising, not just unusual, not just something to check off the bucket list, but really, really sucky too. Luckily I opted to use my waterproof bivvy sack to keep my sleeping bag dry, but my pillow was like a sponge. My foam sleeping pad weighed about 60 pounds and smelled like a wet dog. Haha, man everything was just soaking wet, and it was still raining. I can close the smoke flap and the canvas is waterproof, so very little rain water actually gets into the tipi, but the problem is the water that collects on the sticks above the canvas. Most of it just runs down the poles all the way to the ground, but some of it collects on the rope I have holding the structure together, so there is a constant drip right in the middle of the tipi. Again, this is where the fire would normally be, so it probably wasn’t a big deal for the Native Americans, but it just creates a nice mud pool for me. This is never an issue, as I normally just avoid walking through the middle. During this big storm, however, there was so much water that the earth was just completely saturated, and thus rather than rainwater pouring down, I had groundwater coming up, soaking me from the depths. I keep my personal belongings in plastic storage boxes for this very reason, but the weight of the boxes created a low spot in the carpet, so there was one nice big pool under me and one under my stuff. Funny how that worked out. Everything stayed dry thanks to the boxes though, so that was good…except for my dirty laundry which I didn’t bother to box up and currently smells an abandoned science project. I hate to admit it, but I had to wave the white flag during the storm and headed for the caravan on high ground. The sopping wet pillow was really my breaking point I think. Eventually the rain stopped of course, so I pulled out the carpets/astro turf and my sleeping pad and let them all dry for a day in the sun. When everything seemed [mostly] dry, I pulled it all back inside, arranged it to my liking, and took up residence once again. After staying outside for so long, three consecutive nights in the caravan began making me a little stir crazy, so I was really happy to be back. There is something special about peaking under the canvas to see the pond and all of its life, and gazing up through the smoke flap to the stars of the great beyond. Have you ever seen a shooting star from your bed? Just look up.

So the moral of this story? Living in a tipi is something you should really consider doing! What can you really know about yourself until you have the opportunity to live without weather proofing? How can you get up in the morning without a fly alarm? Wouldn’t you like to hear/see what kind of animal life lurks about in the dark of the night? What’s the point of a night’s rest without a visit from a possum? People lived for thousands of years without double pained windows and rubber strips around their doors, not even a zipper or a rain fly. Give it a shot; I’m not saying you’re going to like it, but you might enjoy parts of it… maybe. And really, there are a lot of little things to laugh at when you realize nature is neither for you, nor against you. I would, however, highly recommend having a fire… it’s a pretty basic tipi requisite, it’s cool to have an open flame inside your house, I think the heat would solve a lot of my moisture issues, and it would definitely make a creature think twice before getting too adventurous around the smoke flap. I’m not saying I’d like to raise a family in a tipi (…although…), but it’s a real interesting experience and something about the rudimentary life helps me find a sliver of humor in every heap of potential suffering. Let’s reflect…

Christmas, Visitors, Road Trips, and Savages

So what’s new? Oh man a lot of stuff. Let’s see what I can remember.

First of all, I’m living in a tipi! That’s right, a real Native American tipi, built out of sticks and canvas. I’ve never even seen a tipi in real life in the States, but I come to New Zealand, to live on a Buddhist monastery, and I hop right into a tipi…makes sense, right? It’s very comfortable and at 5 meters diameter, much too spacious for my needs, but I have plenty of room to spread out and swing my arms about if I want too. The caravan where I was previously staying was about 5’10” wide, so my 6’ person could never quite lay flat at night, so the massive tipi is a blessing. I also had my yearly mohawk when I first set up the tipi, so I really felt the whole vibe. I nearly striped down to a loincloth and war paint, but Ajahn saw my awful farmer’s tan and put a stop to the madness…probably best for everybody. A westerner practicing Buddhism is enough of a culture shock, there was no need to throw in some Native American spirit too (although whose to comment on relativity in spirituality?).

Lots of people have been coming and going here at the monastery, especially during the Christmas season. It’s been really great to have more hands around to help out, not to mention just having more people around to get to know and share experiences with. The monastery is a very comfortable and honest environment, and although incessant chatter is not encouraged, everybody becomes very close very quickly and some very personal things come out. I won’t launch into details, but I have really come to discover that, while my life and American culture in general has its ups and down, all of it pales in comparison to what people around the world have to deal with. And yet, those people are all here to tell me their story! I’ve gotten to know some of these people’s names and faces, but then I learn they are a refugee from an unimaginable situation in their home country, or that they’ve been moved from orphanages to boarding schools all over the world, or their parents were completely abusive and that was the complete norm. It really blows my mind to hear about such experiences from a person right in front of me, practicing meditation next to me. It’s easy for a person living in a first world country to create problems for themselves, engineer some suffering out of some discomfort, and that’s suffering nonetheless, but MAN some people really know what suffering is. More importantly, some people really know what endurance is. Some people really know what practice is all about. I don’t need to have such horrid experiences to find sanctuary in my practice, but to know a bit about the lives of others has given me a serious sense of respect, compassion, and taste of reality outside of what I see as pleasure and pain.

In lighter news, my parents were two of the many visitors during the Christmas season! It was so great to see them! They came out on a snap decision and we had no plans whatsoever, but we really made the best of it. They arrived on the 22^nd, to a sunny and hot day…not the Christmas weather we Americans are used to. It’s summer out here because the seasons are opposite, but funny enough, the shop owners still paint fake frost and snow all over their windows. Clearly, a white Christmas is just the only way Christ intended it to be. So for the first few days, my parents and I hung out at the monastery and I gave them a taste of life out here, complete with early mornings, a single meal daily, and some good old physical labor. They held up pretty well. My dad and I worked on a foot bridge, which is something neither of us have worked on before, so it was a bit of a stab in the dark. As a bonus challenge, it was a curved bridge and we planned to use a natural log as a handrail. It took a few stabs, but in the end the curve was gentile yet well defined and symmetrical, the supports were level, and the bolts held it all together. We didn’t finish the whole thing, because we had more important things to attend to, but we finished the base structure and I was just left with a few aesthetic touches.

Our more important duty was a road trip! On Christmas day, we jumped in the car and headed north of Auckland (aka Northland) to Bay of Islands. Apparently this bay has like 145 islands in it or something, but I only saw about 12… but our sense of vision is all just matter of perception anyway. We were staying in Paihia, a little beach town with no internet access and a quaint little strip of hostels, which we deemed “frat row”. It was a real LOL sort of town. Pretty much everything was shut down because it was Christmas and Boxing Day (btw, what is Boxing Day? Nobody seemed to know, but it was an official holiday), so we had a pretty relaxing time. We did take the ferry out to Russel, which was once known by sailors as “The Hellhole of the Pacific” because of its frequent Maori/British disputes and full-time sailor debauchery. Even Charles Darwin momentarily lost faith in his theory of evolution when he stopped by Russel and saw the devolution of human society right before his eyes. I think if you imagine Vegas at 4:30 AM with less of the appealing glitz, pirate B-O rather than cheap cologne, and more scurvy and/or cabin fever, it might be comparable to what Russel was like all the time. Unfortunately the township has really cleaned up its act, so all that’s left is a line of ritzy gourmet restaurants and a few vacation homes. We took a hike out to Long Beach (who knew you could get to LA from NZ?), and then up to a flag pole which was chopped down 4 separate times (hahahahaha!) by Maori chiefs as a sign of resistance to British rule. To be clear, the Maori and British did sign a peace treaty before the choppings occurred, but it took a while to work out all of the details. To learn about all those pesky details, we took the ferry back from Russel and headed to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the treaty was actually signed and the first official British citizen came to reside, rep the crown, and lay down the law. Not an easy job, considering that as a peace keeper, the poor guy had no guns to back him up on a plot of land directly across from the ol’ Hellhole of the Pacific. He was a well-respected man, however, both by the Maori and the civil British, so in the end he was apparently fairly successful.

After a very full day of Paihia history, we had a night’s rest and decided it was time to hit the road again. Before venturing on, however, we took a half day kayak tour, which turned out to be my favorite part of Paihia. Our guide took our group up a little inlet (similar to Monterey’s Elkhorn Slough for you Bay folk) where we saw a forest of mangrove trees, many bird species up close and personal, and for the grand finale, a waterfall! I’ve seen a handful of waterfalls since I’ve been out here, but it was pretty cool being able to paddle up to one and sit at the foot of the crashing water. As a bonus, on the way back out, the tide had come in so we were able to actually paddle through the mangrove forest. That was even cooler than the waterfall. It was similar to a Louisiana swamp with quiet mysteries behind every branch, but without the fear of a gater attack. Very peaceful yet ever intriguing, and a real navigational challenge in 10’ kayaks!

Following our kayak adventure, we drove in search of the giant Kauri, the largest known Kauri tree. It took all of 3 hours to drive clear across from the east coast to the west coast, which is still a funny concept in my mind. Within those three hours, however, the scenery was comparable to a drive through Northern CA, with steep mountains and thick forests, central CA, with flat plains and wide gorges, and Montana, with mountainsides of thin (non-native, timber farm) pines and cow pastures… but imagine all of that with fern trees growing like weeds. It’s a real pretty place to drive through. And the speed limit everywhere seems to be 100km/hr, so I had a good time of accelerating our little Toyota rental through every turn like a racecar driver. When we finally arrived at Waipoua Forest, we rented ourselves a little cabin to sleep in, then headed out to the forest. When we got there, we saw some big Kauris! Not to sound like a pompous Californian (or maybe for that reason exactly), but I’ve seen redwoods that are larger… but ya know, the Kauris were cool too. They’re really stout trees, so you feel a real sense of power and a dominating presence, plus the big ones are 2000+ years old, which is a trip to think about. They’ve been there longer than there have been humans on the island. They’ve seen it all.

After a God awful night of mosquito-infested half sleep, we got back in the car and headed south. 7 hours of racecar driving later, we arrived at Waitomo, a little farm town with no sit down restaurants and the world famous Waitomo glow worm caves. We took a short hike through a farm park with lots of sheep and a wide collection of conifers, including a few redwoods, and then relaxed the rest of the night away. The next day, we dove into the glowworm caves, with the “world famous” Waitomo Blackwater Rafting Co. My dad and I were expecting a bit of a chincy experience, how crazy could this tourist activity really be? Well, lucky for us, in NZ you’re not allowed to sue anybody, so if you get hurt it’s your own fault… which means they get crazy with their tourist activities! They suited us up with knee-padded wetsuits, gumboots for our feet, and helmets for our noggins, then handed us each an inner tube. The first activity was jumping off a dock with our inner tubes because, “It gets a little loud in the cave, so we have to make sure you know what you’re doing before we get to the waterfalls.” YES!! Waterfalls, jumping, inner tubes, knee pads, helmets… could it all be true? This could really be dangerous, THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT!

So our group of 10 spelunks (that's the real verb for what we were doing... look it up) down to the entrance of the cave and everybody is getting excited. Unfortunately, dad’s headlamp was missing a battery so one of our guides sacrificed his, leaving one of our two guides in the dark. As we moved deeper into the abyss, we reached a stream and were instructed to initiate the tubing. I still couldn’t believe what I was doing, but it got real when the roof of the cave was just a foot off the top of the water and we all had to suck in our gut to get through. It opened up eventually, and we alternated floating with simply stumbling through endless lines of volcanic veins. It was a real trip. Then we reached the glowworms, and it went from sweet, to sweet as, bro (that’s some Kiwi slang for you). These worms, which are actually maggots, apparently burn their excrement to attract bugs into their sticky goop which hangs down from the ceiling. After chillin’, eatin’ bugs n crap for a few weeks, the maggots turn into flies, then reproduce for 48 hours straight, then die. So when you put it like that, the glowworms seem kinda strange and gross, but if you ignore reality and imagine nature simply intended to beautify the dark cave for tourists, it’s awe inspiring. Everybody turned off their lights as we floated down the stream and it totally felt like we were just lying back in the middle of the night, looking up at the starry sky. This was all very relaxing, yada yada yada, but I was ready for some waterfalls! Finally we reached one and were reminded of our training: “jump as far back as you can, try not to flip over, don’t freak out.” It was unclear what would have happened if we broke any of those training tips, but I don’t think anybody wanted to test it. Also, another girl’s light went out, so the other guide sacrificed his light; two guides in the dark, 10 tourist shining lights in each others’ eyes. Dad was first to jump. From his description, it was just blackness below… I find this hilarious! A real leap of faith. So down he went and………splash, and a victory “woop.” So I stepped up to the plate and had myself a splash, then one by one, everybody else plopped down. It wasn’t too insane of a jump, probably about 4-5 feet, but it was pretty exciting nonetheless. A few more relaxing sections, a few fast sections, another waterfall, and we found daylight. It was a good tour, I think about 3 hours, but we were all pretty sad it was ending. Very exciting though, like nothing I’d ever dreamed of doing.

The next stop was Rotorua, known as the center of Maori culture. Something like 70% of the population is Maori, so there’s a lot of pride, which is cool. And the hotel had free internet… those fools!! Haha, lucky for you guys, I sucked up that bandwidth to upload some pics from my Hillary Trail hike (last post). It was a slow connection, so all I could get up were my hiking pics, but I delivered as promised. Anyway, Rotorua has a lot going on, including a good deal of thermal activity, so the whole place smelled like rotten eggs. It brought back memories of our family road trip to Yellowstone, where I collected memories of bison, Old Faithful, bubbling mud pots, but mostly that God awful smell all the time. Since we had in fact seen way sweeter thermal activity in America (where everything is the best), we opted to steer clear of the mud pots, and instead do the luge! This isn’t a luge like in the Olympics/ X-Games, but a slightly safer cart-like contraption with steering and braking. After a warm up on the “scenic route” I was ready for the full experience, and subsequently skidded, went up on two wheels, and nearly flew off the edge several times on the intermediate and advanced routes. My favorite part was really gunning it on the advanced route where it said “SLOW DOWN NOW!” in order to catch some wicked air, bro, down a dangerously steep decline. Again, I can’t believe they let tourists do this kind of stuff… but hey, when you can’t sue anybody, you can really have a ball.

After we got our extreme sports fix, we went to a Maori cultural show. This show sounded similar to one of those hokey luaus you see in Hawaii, complete with the massive barbecue and silly dancing. To my surprise, however, it was really great! Aside from the grandpa singing corny old karaoke songs, it was quite an experience. First we went on a nature walk to a sacred spring, which was cool, but I got the feeling I was being watch… in fact, I was. I looked into the surrounding forest and saw loin-clothed, spear-wielding savages sneaking up on us. If you’ve never had the experience of being hunted in a forest, I’d recommend it. Very exhilarating. Later, a group of Maoris in full facepaint/face tattoos cruised by in a waka (war canoe) and yelled threatening noises at us, with the big eyes and tongue sticking out and everything. If you don’t know, the Maoris used to regularly practice cannibalism; they don’t anymore because it’s not really PC these days, but there was this one guy that had a look in his bulging eyes like he was definitely down to eat me. We continued on to a recreated village, where the tribe did a haka (war dance/ chant) and showed off some of their weapons handling. The guys were definitely intimidating with their screams and threatening movements, but then the girls came up and did a haka and I was downright scared. The guys could clearly tear me limb from limb, but I’m pretty sure the women could eat my soul from 30 feet away. You know, at the luaus I’ve been to, the men come up and swing around a spear, maybe do some fire eating and all that, and the women come up and shake their hips in a bikini and grass skirt… all very exciting. These Maori women had no use for grass skirts: their lips were tattooed black and their eyes were big, and their concern was not to dance but to inspire pure fear. Worked pretty good. After we all had the bejesus scared out of us, it was dinner time, and MC grandpa got back on the mic with his wiqa-wiqa-wiqidy wack karaoke… but it was all good fun anyway. When dinner was over, we took another nature walk into a bird sanctuary where we saw many native birds, some gigantic rainbow trout (imported from CA), and some gigantic redwoods (also imported from CA… it’s like home away from home). The best part, though, was of course seeing KIWI BIRDS! They were in a pen, so it wasn’t really their natural environment, but it was still really great. They are funny little creatures. Much bigger than I thought they would be too, about as big as a chicken. They were just cruising around in their pens eating bugs and stuff, which is I guess what they do, but I could really see why the kiwi is the national bird… they’re so captivating!

The next day was New Year’s Eve, and the day to drive back to the monastery. It was really great seeing my parents, I was so happy to have them out, both to see the monastery and to see some of NZ. Since its summer, it really doesn’t feel like Christmas time, and Christmas day slid right by us, but it was a perfect little vacation and a lot more relaxed than Christmas usually is. So all-in-all it was a great trip and I was happy to get out and explore the country a bit more. I got dropped off at the monastery, and my parents continued on to the airport to fly back to the States. I brought in the New Year that night at the city temple, chanting in a language that I do not understand, and meditating on metta (loving-kindness) for all of my friends and family in the new year. After the clock struck 12, we all got up and feasted on more dessert than I have ever seen in my life… luckily my resolution this year had nothing to do with avoiding junk food, so I dug right in. Hopefully everybody had a great Christmas and New Year, and is enjoying their winter break/start of a new semester. Sorry this post didn't include my usual pictorial and wikipedia supplemental links, my connection is limited right now and I didn't want to bother finding links... but hopefully you all looked up some funny pictures and informative definitions as you read. I wish you all luck in the new year, and I’ll post again soon (for real this time)!