A Treehouse, a little you-and-me house

When H got the idea to rent out the treehouse six and a half years ago, he wondered whether anyone would want to stay in a tiny dwelling thirty feet above the ground. Would guests be able to climb a steep ladder to get into the loft bed? Would they mind hiking seventy feet to the main house to use the bathroom? In a strong wind, the treehouse sways, and inevitably there are spiders. Would guests tolerate bugs, not to mention mice and squirrels skittering over the roof?             The answer is an overwhelming, enthusiastic yes. Guests not only want to stay in the treehouse, but they clamor for a booking. As 2015 draws toward a close, every available night in 2016 is booked. Some have reserved nights six months to a year in advance. The only way to grab a lofty sleep anytime soon is if someone cancels.             A New York gal canceled this past weekend because her boyfriend had broken up with her. Within twenty minutes, two parties were vying to scoop up the open spot. H wrot

Jing and Hua were late arriving for their night in the Treehouse. I had kept an eye peeled for them but wasn’t expecting two carloads to drive up. Hua came to the door first, his wife Jing following, while another young couple, a toddler, and an older man and woman worked their way out of the other vehicle. The Treehouse sleeps three cozily, but its hundred square feet are more comfortable for two. I wondered where in the world we were going to put seven people. As Hua promptly explained, he and Jing drove from their Baltimore home and stopped in Saratoga Springs to visit friends—the couple with the two-year-old. The older couple were the toddler’s grandparents visiting from China. Everyone, even young Daniel, wanted to see the Treehouse. It’s a tight space, so they took turns having the tour. Jing and Hua went first while their friends waited in the spitting snow. It took three shifts to give everyone a look. Daniel especially marveled at the toys and a miniature treehouse perch

             E ver think about what you were like in high school?   Fern Forest Treehouse seems to be the destination for high school sweethearts. Jess and Chris  are pushing thirty, and this weekend they were celebrating one year until their wedding next fall. She’s a gorgeous blonde who works in the Vermont governor’s office, and he’s a talkative engineer designing VAC for commercial businesses. The two Vermonters met on a blind date when Jess was fifteen and Chris was two years older. They liked each other immediately and dated throughout high school. When Chris went to Clarkson to study engineering, Jess saw him whenever he was home. After high school, she enrolled at SUNY Potsdam to be near him. A few weeks ago we had a couple from Boston who fell in love when they were assigned high school lockers next to each other. At sixteen, Zoe had dated a few guys but didn’t connect with any of them. Then one day she and Brian were at their lockers at the same time. Their elbows bump

Rebecca and Doug look like perfectly normal people. In fact, they’re an unusually attractive couple. She’s a strawberry blonde, and he has a swarthy handsomeness. Neither has tattoos, no purple hair, no nose rings. Most of the time Rebecca is dressed in scrubs for her job as a surgical physician’s assistant, but when they arrived at Fern Forest she was wearing a simple peach colored dress. They were driving a black Mini Cooper—nothing outlandish about that.             But take a closer look. Notice the hood ornament. Clawing her way toward the Mini symbol was a mini-voluptuous nude with flaming red hair flying back from her head as if blown by the wind. Rebecca sculpted the nude from clay and had it cast in black metal, then bolted it to the hood. The nude’s arm is raised, and her fist is threaded so Rebecca can screw in different items for her to hold. This weekend it was a winged dragon.             “Nice car,” I said to Doug. “This one’s mine,” he said. “Rebecca drives th

In spring 1794, a group of men set their shoulders to clearing land in what is now Lincoln, Vermont. The footpath they blazed into the forest eventually became a road named for the Quakers who came to settle with ox carts holding all their belongings. They were young, strong, and healthy. Once they pried rocks from the fields, they found the soil rich enough to support their crops. A year later, nearly one hundred residents, mostly from New York and Connecticut, scattered over 24,000 acres of wilderness, most living in tiny one-room cabins made from logs they hewed by hand from trees they had cut on their property. They cooked meals in stick-and-mud fireplaces, spun wool from their sheep, wove fabrics to make their own clothing, and cobbled shoes for their families. They hunted game in the forests and guarded their livestock from wolves that prowled the land. When the crops failed and game was sparse, they went hungry. Quaker services were held in homes until they built a m

A treehouse changes everything.  Byrd asked to stay in the treehouse on Monday night. Usually we don’t accept reservations on Mondays, but she seemed like she really needed some nurturing. She had been taking care of her elderly mother, and when her mother died, Byrd felt deep grief. Taking time off from her job as an airport gate attendant, she had spent the last several days alone in her mother’s house, surrounded by her mother’s things. She hadn’t been out of the house or spoken with anyone in a week. We thought it was time for her to come out of her shell. Speaking of shells, when Byrd drove up, I pointed out the bright blue robin’s egg that somehow had been deposited on the path to the front door. Ants had eaten the yolk, but I hadn’t wanted to dispose of the egg, like a small gift by the steps. Byrd thought it was a good sign, since her real name is Robin. I thought so, too. Before she settled into the treehouse for the night, we offered her a drink and some cheese a

            A year ago Vlad and Brittany were given a weekend in the Treehouse as a wedding gift. Shortly after the wedding, Brittany was growing heavy with their first child, and her protruding belly prevented her from climbing a tricky ladder to sleep in a tree loft. So they waited a year, during which time little Galena came into their lives—and, on this Mother’s Day weekend, into ours.             When he was nineteen, Vlad moved from Russia to Los Angeles with his parents. He met Brittany while he was studying for his PhD at M.I.T. Brittany, a pretty, seraphic blonde, was at Harvard Medical School at the time. Obviously things clicked. They dated for a year, and a week after Vlad moved into Brittany’s Cambridge condo, they were married.             Russians are very close with their families, and Vlad’s mom Tatiana came from California to help with baby Galena. This past weekend, all four of them came to Fern Forest to honor the wedding gift. Tatiana and Galena stayed in the

Last weekend Fern Forest hosted an Indian wedding. I don’t mean literally. The wedding took place in Mumbai this past November. We were invited but unable to attend, but two months later we gave Sagar and Jahnvi a wedding gift of two nights in the Treehouse. Last April when they first visited us, these two Jains fell in love. Sagar shares a dental practice with his father on Long Island and as is the Indian custom, he lives in his parents' house. When he invited Jahnvi to visit for a weekend, he wanted a romantic getaway sans parents. Enter the Treehouse. The two stayed for three nights, and we were delighted to see them again on a Friday in January. Even though temperatures dipped deeply below zero, they didn’t seem to mind. The Treehouse is heated and cozy. After Saturday breakfast, they showed us pictures of the events leading up to the wedding. There was a Bollywood-style party with choreographed dances performed by the bride and groom and their friends. Jah

We have a new record for coldest night spent in the Treehouse. Julian and Carina came up from Boston during their semester break from Emerson College, where they’re both sophomores. Even though we warned them about the cold and the snowy roads, they braved the mountain curves and hills in Julian’s clunker of a car. He was celebrating his 20 th birthday and told us he was born on the coldest day of the year. He seems to be a record breaker where cold is concerned. Julian managed to get his “wonky” auto to the bottom of our driveway where H met them and led them down to the Lincoln Library parking lot to leave their car. It took a while to transfer suitcases and several bags of their groceries into the my Subaru for the trip up our steep driveway. Obviously they weren’t planning on traveling for the next couple of days. Carina turned nineteen in December but seems much older. The New Yorker is majoring in photography at Emerson, where she and Julian met. A tall lan