[Contributor post by Jarod Sickler]
Imagine this: your tent is in the middle of a neighborhood, only to you it doesn’t feel like a neighborhood because your tent is a quarter of a mile out on a peninsula only fifty yards wide. On three sides of you are the beautiful waters of Table Rock Lake. There is only one entrance, and consequently one exit for a land-dweller…
I am excited to announce our newest TentLife contributor – Mark Montgomery.
Mark is not only a vagabond thinker but also older brother to Skot Montgomery (TentLife in Alabama & Tennessee), this free spirit must run in the family…
A couple weeks ago I had a last minute opportunity to spend some time in Lexington Mass with my wife’s extended family. My wife asked me while we were there, “What do you absolutely need to see while you’re here?” I said, “Two things…
It seems that the more that I have, the more I need. When the complexities of life come full steam then I notice that the contentment seems to fade away. For the past several days I have woken up feeling dull, bored, and lifeless. Life has become too easy – the risk, the thrill, and sometimes the misery is gone. Looking back on my tent days it seems that everyday had a little bit more excitement…
It’s time to get organized at up in here… Because I have done a terrible job of posting regular content, it is time to set up a schedule of posts…
There were many factors that led me to move into a tent. I wanted simplicity. I wanted peace. I wanted solitude. Interestingly, I got all of those things plus a few added bonuses. Before I moved into the tent I wasn’t exactly breaking the bank but I wasn’t hurting to pay the bills either. Two, and sometimes three, jobs provided enough cash flow to rent an apartment in Valdosta, GA…the cheapest place to live on planet earth. So, the cheapness of tentlife was icing on the cake…
If I could describe my experience in tentlife it would definitely be: different (so different that it even overwhelmed my craziest expectations). Obviously going from a house with a TV, computer, electricity, running water, refrigeration to a giant ziplock baggie is very different, but that isn’t what made the experience so amazing, it was the people.
Trying to gain an understanding of the variables when doing tentlife is like trying to understand a woman’s mind without using chocolate to help…
TentLife contributor Don Hogan leads summer backpacking trips in the Weminuche Wilderness in Southwest Colorado…
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My initial thoughts over what I would be writing about all fizzled and died before I even put ink on the page, however (and obviously) there was one idea that stuck. “What would be some constants and some variables that a person living a tentlife would encounter?”…
During the spring semester of my junior year of college I decided that life had become far too complicated. My schedule was slammed, the storage space in my apartment was over flowing, and I felt like I couldn’t keep up with myself. Something had to change. I needed to simplify.
About that same time I came across Acts 2:45 in my studies which reads, “selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”
Flickr Photos