Arboreal

Our son likes to get high. He is once again building a tree house. It’s his fifth tree house, and he is forty-three years old.

His first, childhood tree house was in our beloved willow tree. My husband built the structure, but young eyes were watching. By age nine, our boy wanted to be higher in the tree and was able to build an addition to the original structure by himself.

The next tree house, number three, was breathtakingly high and constructed when he was fifteen. We didn’t worry about the neighbor kids falling out of the tree, though, as no boards were nailed to the trunk for stairs. Years of tree house living had enable our kid to scale the trunk. Privacy was insured, but the squirrels did claim the platform for their nest location one year.

Twenty years later, the tradition continued and our son built a back yard tree house for his children in California. Everyone in our family seems to have a genetic throwback for preferring life in the trees.

His current tree house  is a work in progress. When completed, it will be a room in the trees set on carefully engineered beams and concrete piers. Our son’s media of choice is concrete. He is particularly proud of the spline he just completed. Since “spline” was not a word in my vocabulary, I needed to be enlightened. A spline is a curve that connects two or more specific points, or that is defined by two or more points. You will find his fine concrete spline in the following photos.

I wonder what will come next? I’m not excluding the possibility that he may someday leave land living behind and build his primary dwelling in the trees. He wouldn’t be the first to do this.

Click here for the female version of a tree house

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5 thoughts on “Arboreal”

  1. Mary,
    Oh, that is more than awesome.
    But why am I not surprised?
    Now I’ll have to go to the dictionary
    to see if that word is pronounced
    “spleen” or (as it looks) “spline.”
    merci,
    evie

    Reply

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