Behind the Headlines

I’m having one of those days where I realize that things I considered normal or accepted as nothing special are actually kind of odd. This is what reporting will do to a person.

I’m currently writing a story about some wigwams the historical society put up at the outpost off of Raisinville Rd. Some look like actual wigwams – half domes rising out of the earth like foothills and some look like teepees. More than once in talking with people about these, I’ve had my own flashes of wigwam memories (which, for whatever reason, I keep wanting to refer to as wamories).

In college, one of our friends – this older (ha! in his 30’s) hippie kind of guy – lived in a wigwam during the fall and winter months. During the spring he had to vacate because the melting snow would overtake the wigwam, flooding it until it was more like a wading pool than a place someone lived. It was out in the woods, one of those places that you had to know how to find – turn left at the knobby tree and then right at the moss pile, etc. It was actually really nice and would get so warm with a few of us in there swigging from the wine jug that he would have to move the animal skin door off to the side and let the fire die down a little. I should probably mention that I went to NMU in Marquette where these kinds of things are not commonplace, but not rare, either.

There was also a grouping of teepees, a little outside of town right on the coast of Superior, where I spent a bit of time. Technically I think they were in Harvey, kind of a suburb to Marquette. It was like a condo village, just slightly non-traditional as the teepees were concrete. There was a house that seemed like the overlord house at the front of the collection. I remember it had a hot tub. In the winter we would sit for hours getting pruny and then try to run the 40 feet or so to the lake through the snow to jump in. We never made it. The worst was when our warm feet would break through the ice crust on top of the snow, sinking us into the deep snow, scraping our shins all the way down. (By the way, the heat and then extreme cold thing was borrowed from the concept of the traditional sauna. Heat heat heat and then go roll in the snow while your friends hit you – to invigorate! – with a cedar bow.)

So in thinking about this and trying to write the story, I’ve realized this was probably not typical. Can you imagine just walking through the woods and ending up in a village of large concrete teepees? Writing features is always interesting, if not for what it conjures in one’s mind.