Suburban Tepee

Commodities broker longs for life close to the earth

By Nicole DeCosta

Pamplin Media Group, May 14, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

VERN UYETAKE / Pamplin Media Group

Jonathan Paulson sits at his “caveman TV,” a ring of fire in the tepee where he lives, in his parents’ backyard in Lake Oswego.

Dressed in a navy suit, red tie and shined shoes, 25-year-old Jonathan Paulson looks like any other recent college graduate trying to make his way in the world.

A commodities broker with his dad’s company, Paulson Commodities, he spends most of his work days on the Internet and calling clients on the phone.

His secret?

“I keep my suit outside the tepee,” Paulson says. “I don’t want it to smell like smoke.”

For the past year, Paulson has lived in a prefabricated tepee set up in his parents’ back yard in Lake Oswego.

The Lakeridge High School graduate weaves baskets, makes fire by rubbing sticks together and uses a hippopotamus skin to keep warm. At night he watches “caveman TV,” the round fire pit in the middle of his tepee.

While he drives a Ford F-150 King Ranch truck, uses a cell phone and works out at the local gym, Paulson has lived outdoors for three years, starting while he was in college.

He says he’s no radical and isn’t trying to send a political message. He’s just trying to live nearer to nature.

“It brings us closer to how we were meant to live while still being a normal functioning person in today’s world,” he says.

Formative experiences

Paulson’s introduction to the outdoors came when he was just a toddler. At age 3 he was helping his father hunt big game in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon and duck and goose on Sauvie Island. At 11, he went on an African safari.

He’s visited every continent except Antarctica and found time to earn two college degrees with honors — studying arts, humanities and ancient languages — while playing wide receiver for the Harding University football team in Arizona.

“Since our technology is so dominating, I try to do as little of it as possible and do as much of the old ways as possible,” Paulson says. “This equation results in somewhat of a balance.”

Paulson began living outdoors during his junior year at college, starting with an earth shelter he made from sticks.

“I firmly believe that humans were meant to live with the earth, no matter what your worldview is,” he says.

It’s not always comfortable living in a tepee. Sometimes it’s too warm or too cold to sleep, Paulson says.

“You smell like smoke, and it’s also time-consuming.”

Paulson admits to missing Eggo waffles and cereal. But living in his parents’ back yard keeps him close to a kitchen, just in case.

While away in college, Paulson had to keep his adventure living in the woods private, because all students were required to live on campus.

“I would literally go through the woods, pole vault over a stream and cross underneath a bridge to get to and from campus,” he says.

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