The Tree House

Ten feet behind the Happy Camper is a decrepit tree house. I can see it from the back window of the camper. Any day now it will fall in a heap to the ground. It is hanging by the vines that have grown around it, but soon those will let go and there will be nothing to keep it in it's place. Each day, as I write in the HC, I can hear the tree creaking and the tree house wood shifting by the tiniest of degrees. I wonder if I will be close by when the tree house finally falls so I will hear it come crashing down, or if I will be away somewhere and only discover its demise later. I would like to be around when it happens but you never know.

The tree that has held the tree house for so many years is a Honey Locust. There was a small tree house in the tree when we first moved into the house, and my husband simply added on to what was there. The tree is big and the climb up to the tree house was epic--as in if you actually made the climb and managed to get over the rail to the platform you were a Hero for the Day. Climbing back down was a whole other adventure. We tried our best to make sure our sons each had a long and happy childhood. This was one part of it. In fact, I happen to subscribe to the notion that everyone should carry some good part of their childhood with them throughout life.

But no one has made the epic climb in years and of course now it wouldn't be safe. Maybe it wasn't safe to begin with, but a tree house was just something a child had to have in their imaginary landscape, at least when much of one's play involved being outdoors. Fortunately, no one has ever fallen out of the tree house and broken anything.


I like to think that the tree is shedding it on purpose...it has accommodated us all and held the tree house up for many years, but now, even the old Honey Locust has outgrown it. Trees do their work slowly and with them, change and growth can be barely observable, but the disintegration of the tree house has been fairly marked in recent weeks. I don't think it will be much longer before the whole thing comes down....