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homes & gardens A 24/7 manager lives on site and handles day-to-day operations, overseeing and maintaining the common areas of what is almost like a huge plantation. Members have access to a three-bedroom rustic lodge, a quaint cabin on a three-acre stocked pond, a skeet and rifle range, barn, tack room and pastures for the families' horses and the one paved road connecting the private lots. More than 25 miles of unpaved trails and roads crisscross the preserve that surrounds the home sites. Frazier and the other owners have formed a bond, working and playing together much more so than in traditional neighborhoods. They have an annual New Year's Eve "party crawl" – which often ends beside the campfire outside the Sheridans' tipi – and they come together as neighbors to do chores such as cutting firewood and cleaning up lots after a storm. Hunters abide by rules and restrictions on times and places for hunting, allowing nonhunters to share in enjoying the vast preserve for other recreation activities. 28 l Macon Magazine The Tipi Experience "Tino is all about the family project," Alice said. And the tipis they've erected – they are now on their second one – have been just that. While the canvas came from Nomadic, trees for the 25-foot lodge poles were cut from their land, then stripped and tapered with an old-fashioned drawknife, hand sanded and oiled with linseed, all by the couple and their sons. "It was July - hot and difficult work - and it took us three months," Tino said, laughing. "But it was a great project!" and preparation critical to the efficiency and livability of a tipi. The simple cone shape of a tipi, Tino found, is testament to the Plains Indians' ingenuity and belies its complexity. The way the poles are lashed together, the folds of the canvas and the smoke flap, the lining, the tethering of the canvas to the ground all combine to make the dwelling adaptable to wind, rain and portability. That first tipi lasted about six years before the Middle Georgia humidity took its toll, Alice said. On New Year's Eve of last year, they held a tipi raising party to april/MAy 2013