I built a tree house

I remember one of the best summers of my childhood. I’m no longer sure how old I was, but I certainly was older, and we still lived in the big rented home. We had a long weekend camp with our local nature-preserving organization when the summer holidays came to a close each year. I connect many memories of sitting around a fire and my father cooking risotto on the fire.

But we children just loved the freedom of being outside and building dams in the creek or climbing on trees. On one such camp, we were in a forest where they had cut down many young trees the week before, and it was the perfect material to build a treehouse. So our task for that weekend was set. We quickly found a group of four – or three trees to build in.

Our trees had few branches at ground level, and it took a lot of work to climb up there. It was manageable as I was used to climb onto everything at that age. And I distinctly remember that it was high up in the tree. How high up we built is a bit hazy in my memory, I was smaller, and everything looked higher and bigger. It was around four meters above ground but could also be only three meters. And time also tends to distort your memories of the event as well.

Another crucial ingredient for our build were plastic strings which the farmers commonly use to create hay bales here. We got them from a nearby farm. So we did not nail into the tree, which was vital to us. And now that I think back a bit more, the platform we soon had erected was triangular and not quadratic. I remember that it got smaller towards one end. And the entry point was on the broad side as this was the easiest tree to climb up.

An older child directed our build process, which was a strange situation for me as I used to be the older guy in our neighborhood. And the position of directing and planning usually was my role. It was a different experience for me getting help with projects and instructions. It also creates some links to my current life, as I’m still usually in positions where I need to figure shit out on my own. And it is also something I like very much and am proud of. But I cherish the few moments where I can work collaboratively, getting different points of view helps with getting a better result. Having other persons invested in the project on the same level as me is a dream come true. I often feel lonely with my interest and projects. I’m so glad we have the internet now! Where I can find community.

But I digress from my story here. The initial task was getting three strong joists connected to our group of trees. Our joist material came from the strongest trees we found on the ground. I don’t know for what reason was that they removed all these young trees. Usually, you harvest the older trees. But it was perfect for us as these trees were straight and had no limbs—the ideal building material. And there was an abundance of trees to choose from. You could have built ten tree houses and still have material for more projects. Another thing I used to like was climbing up these thing an nimble trees – I was using them like a climbing pole – not something I should try now it unfortunatly only results in pain ;-).

On top of the tree joist, we placed thinner limbs to build a floor. We were securing everything together with strings, making a sturdy platform. We never got further as at that point the weekend was over and the real life called again.

In the evenings, we returned to the camp worn out by climbing in the trees all day. And we were glad our parents cooked a tasty meal on the open fire, which we ate. And with a full belly, we moved closer to the fire as it got dark and colder. We started to tell eachothers stories, later a guitar came out, and we started singing songs. Most of the songs were in Swiss German. But I also remember hearing the song “Country roads” at one of these fires for the first time. And I instantly loved that song – not that I understood the lyrics back then, but the melody had a longing quality. Which forever connected this song with summer camp and being outside in the forest, drinking hot tea, and looking at the stars.

This writing was triggered by reading the chapter 14 “The Memoir” in the book “On Writing Well” by Wiliam Zinsser. It was orginally written as my 188 morning page, but is published her as I like what I wrote!

The images shown on this page were generated using DiffusionBee App in version 1.5.1 with the following promts:

1. Seed : -1 | Scale : 7.5 | Steps : 25 | Img Width : 768 | Img Height : 768 | Negative Prompt : no humans | model_version: 1.5fp16 Prompt: tree house Graphic Novel, Romantic
2. Seed : 23832 | Scale : 7.5 | Steps : 25 | Img Width : 768 | Img Height : 768 | Negative Prompt : no uggly humans | model_version : 1.5fp16 Prompt: camp fire, people sitting around at night, starry night Graphic Novel, Romantic
3. Seed : 54063 | Scale : 7.5 | Steps : 25 | Img Width : 768 | Img Height : 768 | Negative Prompt : no mosaik, no humans, no text | model_version : 1.5fp16 Prompt: Almost heaven, West Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River Life is old there, older than the trees Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze, Romantic, paintings

• /writing
• /non-fiction
• /childhood-memories
• /treehouse