Welcome to our site.  It has been created to share a bit of our lives with family, friends and whoever else happens to be reading this.  We don’t get online much and are finding it a bit awkward learning how to navigate and although it’s intimidating, we may have something worth sharing with people.  It’s difficult to share the subtleties of life on a showy web page but hopefully some beauty is relayed.

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We live in a tipi.  I share this first because it is something that sets us apart from most people we know.  Full time, year round, my husband Ande and I and our two children, Rowan age 2 and Isla age 8 months.  This is only my forth winter, my husband’s sixteenth or something.  I learned from him, who came from living in a tipi community in South Wales.  I’ll be honest, it’s been difficult until this last year, well, until Isla was born.  Up until then we had been living in our tipi in town in people’s backyards and at camp grounds.  And through a series of magical events I find myself writing at home out in a meadow in the cascade siskiyou national monument, now in the proper context.

At the peak of this last summer we were living with 16 people in the woods, many of them children, but as winter approached people packed their things and headed somewhere warmer.  dsc01715We were sad to see people go, as we hope to someday find folk who are inspired to live this way year round.  I appreciated what Ande had to say about this, that the winter can’t sustain the summer life, that there’s an inherent contraction and slowing down.  Before too much snow fell, we moved down a bit in elevation to where we are now, along Carter Creek.  Gratefully, we live here with one other family.  Six tipis all together plus our bedouin style tent shop.  My husband and I make tipis as our livelihood.  We are proud of the treadle-powered industrial sewing machine.  You can check out our website at www.RogueDwellings.com

It’s about living with the elements and having an intimate relationship with them.  I was asked by a townie friend if I find any time while mothering two young children for a “spiritual practice”.  The question truly baffled me.  I live around an open fire and I sleep on the earth.  I breath fresh clean air and drink spring water gathered from up the hill.  I fetch washing water from the creek and I wash dishes in sunshine, under rainbows and in feet of snow.  Do I find time for a spiritual practice?  I ended up saying I didn’t find much time for yoga and sitting if that’s what she meant.

It’s about personal responsibility and integrity.  About living a dynamic and fully alive life.  About cultivating a deep respectful relationship witht the world around me.  It’s for something much greater than me.  It’s  for my children and the many more generations to come.

I want to live an epic life.

My husband and I have a strong vision.  It is becoming clearer as time passes.  I hope that through this site our vision can be shared with many and inspire those who want to live simply and respectfully.  We are comitted to this way of living and pray that we will find others who feel the same.

Kayla