A Treehouse, a little you-and-me house

            When Kelly walked into the big cat house at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo, she broke into tears.   She has wanted to be a zookeeper since she was in college but she was focused on ungulates, hoofed animals like giraffes, pigs, deer, and hippopotamuses. That was before she met the lions. In that single moment she realized what she wanted to do with her life.             Kelly is very pretty with a mane of long, lion-colored hair. Always protected by a barrier, she says the tigers are a challenge to train, but she trains the lions by praising them and giving treats when they do as she asks. She gets an old male to open his mouth so she can check his teeth and gums for sores, and if he has a cut on a paw pad, she has taught him to hold up his paw so she can reach through the mesh to apply an ointment. When the lion behaves badly, she ignores him and he doesn’t get a treat.              She gives her boyfriend Will a sideways glance. “You can train men that way, too,” she s

           Last weekend's guests at  Fern Forest  brought us the tradition of the Catalon Christmas pooping log. That’s right—a log that poops—presents. Ari, from Catalonia, and Juan, from Colombia, brought their daughters Maia and Mar for a second visit to the Treehouse, this time with åvia (grandmother) Anna visiting from Barcelona. On one of their three nights with us, they told us that Santa doesn’t bring children gifts in Catalonia. They get gifts from Caga Tió , the log with a smiling face and a red stocking cap.               Beginning with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, children place a bit of food in front of Tió every night and cover him with a blanket to keep him warm. If they take good care of the log, it will poop gifts for them. The tradition goes that on Christmas Day the children leave the room to practice their Tió de Nadal songs and pray for presents.             C hildren in Catalonia, it seems, are permitted free use of the

             My biggest regret about being a student at George Washington University in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s is that I didn’t take photos at the student rallies to protest the Vietnam War. I thought about those times this past weekend when Mike and Chantal visited Fern Forest. They’re both artists. Mike constructs public installations of huge mosaic tile images, and Chantal heads the graphic art program at Tufts. They had booked the Treehouse to celebrate the thirteenth birthday of their beautiful, dewy-eyed daughter Leyla.   Mike Mandel, "Myself: Timed Exposures, 1971"                   Chantal has published several books of her artwork, and I’m especially drawn to the images overlaid with words. The Turk and the Jew is my favorite, a visual documentation of her courtship with Mike. She’s from Turkey, a round-face beauty who holds the steady job while Mike fishes for projects. “Photographs are basically small pixels,” Mike says. “So why not blow up a ph

             What do you get when you cross a dairy farmer with an English teacher? You get Jan and Bill from Gilbertsville, New York. This past weekend they took a break from their busy lives to spend a couple nights at Fern Forest Treehouse.             Never heard of Gilbertsville? I hadn’t either. A little over three hours northwest of New York City near Cooperstown, Gilbertsville has a population of fewer than four hundred citizens. Just one square mile in size, during the late 19 th and early 20 th century the town was a summer retreat for wealthy city slickers. The Major’s Inn, built on the site of Gilbertsville’s founder, is a 55-room historic mansion in English Tudor style. Nearby, a stone bridge arcs gracefully over Butternut Creek.             Bill’s organic dairy farm is just outside town. At 75, he is the 4 th generation to run the farm. A confirmed bachelor all his life, he’s about to pass the business on to his nephew, who pretty much runs the show now.      

I’m grateful to live in an age when without blinking an eye two women can ask to spend their honeymoon in our treehouse. Younger readers may take such a thing for granted, but years ago there was a fair chance that a hotel or B&B wouldn’t accept an unmarried couple of any sexual orientation. Gays or lesbians would have to present themselves as friends and would be given a room with two beds.             But not anymore. When Sarah reserved the Treehouse with her new wife Sommer, we had a nice flower arrangement waiting for them and a half-bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. No worries about champagne—they brought a full bottle of their own. We welcomed them with hugs and congratulations.             H and I are planning the wedding of our older boy, so I picked the brains of these experienced event planners, taking notes as they spoke about their nuptials. They’ve been together for six years and spent a year and a half sorting out the details of the Big D

When guests arrive for a weekend at Fern Forest Treehouse, I always look for some common ground to make them fee l comfortable. That’s often not an easy task when a couple is half our age (sometimes even less) and from a different section of the country. But with Danielle and Sty, it was a no-brainer—our common element was the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.             My son Bry was born on January 8, Elvis’s birthday. Danielle and Sty were married in Las Vegas—by Elvis. At least, he looked like Elvis and sang almost as well, but when he signed the marriage certificate, the ruse was revealed. He was not the real Elvis.             But when you’re in Las Vegas, fantasy becomes reality. A limo met the couple at their hotel and transported them to the little white chapel. Elvis was waiting at the door with flowers for Danielle in one hand and a mic in the other. She took his arm, and he sang her down the aisle. Danielle couldn’t remember what song he crooned, and I don’t blame her—I’d ha

Southern Baptist minister Reverend Walter assures me he is not one of those Pentecostal preachers who handles rattlesnakes to prove God’s protection. He handles them for a different reason. This week the Treehouse was honored with a visit from the pastor of a Baptist church in Georgia. Walter, as he asked me to call him, and his wife Wanna were taking their granddaughter Lily on an East Coast odyssey. Lily is home-schooled, and Walter thought they could enhance her learning with visits to the Shenandoah Valley, where many of the Civil War skirmishes took place, and Gettysburg, where Robert E. Lee was defeated in the conflict that took more lives than any other battle of the war. Lily got to see a little of Boston, where the Yankees claim to have been America’s first settlers. We southerners know, of course, that Virginia’s Jamestown colony was established eleven years before the pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock. But the Baptists’ GPS was set for farther north, and on Mond

            Whatever happened to that old school custom of family first? My three brothers live in Virginia, Florida and Arizona. Rarely do they visit me in Vermont. If I’m lucky, I see them once a year when I travel to them, but at least we’re in touch through email. For Fern Forest Treehouse guests Robinson and Carleigh, however, family is their rock. Rob’s mother came to New York from the Dominican Republic when she was seventeen. He still has relatives in the Dominican, most of whom don’t speak a word of English. (By the way—baseball is BIG in the Dominican with exported stars like Red Sox David Ortiz, who learned to speak English pretty well.) Spanish was Rob’s first language, which comes in handy when he meets with Hispanic clients in his job as insurance agent and financial consultant in Providence. Carleigh’s dad moved from Italy to the U.S. with his family when he was nine. He taught her to love everything Italian. During college she spent a semester in Italy and wa

               If someone invited me to hop on a bike and spend a year pedaling to the southern tip of Argentina, I’d have to be madly in love to say yes. Apparently Cupid’s arrow has pierced the hearts of Treehouse guests Christine and Nico because that’s exactly their plan.             The couple came to Fern Forest for an overnight respite after spending three days hiking and two frigid nights sleeping in shelters on the Long Trail. But bundled in cold weather gear, they certainly know how to dress for winter. Once they figured out how to zip their sleeping bags together, they weathered the sn owy nights well.              Nico,  from Dresden in Germany,  is a handsome fellow with a neat cinnamon beard and hair that curls over his shirt collar. While he was working as a software engineer, he got the idea of going on a long cycling trip.  Enter Christine. She is a three-season gardener with a fit body and an adventurous spirit. “ If I have the opportunity and the fre