It seems as though building a tree house was a standard part of growing up in America, at least until the suburban explosion of the 1980s. In my old neighborhood alone there were at least half a dozen tree houses of varying shapes and sizes, including the one my brothers and I built in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, I visited my old stomping grounds a few months back to find both the tree house and its host gone. What a shame.
Our tree house was by no means a mansion in the sky or a sandpiper resort with all the amenities. It was a simple platform about 15 feet off the ground with no roof or sides yet we loved it because it was something we built with our own hands. We used it as our home base when we played war with the neighborhood kids. During the winter months it was a great place to hide while throwing snowballs at my siblings. There are so many fond memories of that tree house including my personal favorite, running a zip line down to the fence and using an old auto seatbelt as a harness. All was well until the seatbelt broke from the friction, sending my older brother to a hard posterior landing. We still laugh about it today.
The coolest thing about our tree house wasn’t the trap door, the ladder built in to the trunk, the view of the yard, or even the great access it gave us to the roof of the main house. It was the sense of independence. It was our space; it didn’t belong to our parents, we could exclude our friends if we were so inclined, we didn’t even have to keep it clean. We built it, we maintained it, and we were free to do with it as we pleased. That little platform in the air was our kingdom. It was great.
Maybe your kids are asking for a tree house but you don’t know how to build one. So what? Of course there are basic things you need to do correctly like finding a solid tree and making sure the tree house has the proper support, but after that let it be whatever the kids want it to be. Let them help design it, gather the materials, and participate in the construction. Let them have as big a part in building their kingdom as possible. Who knows, maybe they’ll drive by the old place when they have kids of their own and find their tree house gone. But they’ll still have their memories; memories that will last a lifetime.
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