A Treehouse, a little you-and-me house

Sarah and Brian arrived at Fern Forest last weekend in a cute Mini Cooper AWD, which trundled up our snowy driveway without a slip. They’re event planners in Massachusetts and organize corporate conferences and festivals for thousands of people—sometimes as many as a hundred thousand. Imagine arranging venues and hotel reservations, designing registration folders with name tags and itineraries, planning meals, scheduling talks and workshops, solving a myriad of problems and answering a hailstorm of questions. Imagine the rise in blood pressure, the surging anxiety. Three weeks earlier, they would have driven their SUV, but there had been an accident. Sarah was driving while Brian reclined in the passenger seat, asleep. They were on the highway, returning from a trip, and Sarah had her ear tuned to the voice of the GPS device to guide her home. When the GPS lady told her to turn right, which would take them south, Sarah knew she should be going north. Could there be a glitch in the...

I was coming down with the flu and in bed when the Russians arrived for a stay in the treehouse. I heard the front door open, the clamor of suitcases and greetings, and a little feminine voice say, “Hi! What’s upstairs?”             We’ll call the girl Verushka. She had just turned a precocious seven. H hadn’t said anything about the guests bringing a child, and when I heard her traipsing up the stairs, I pulled up the covers and pretended to be asleep.             It was Monday. We don’t usually take guests during the week, but H thought the Russians sounded interesting, so he accepted them. They booked the treehouse for three nights.             When I heard Verushka’s parents—Elana and Nureyev, we’ll call them—peppering H with questions, I rolled out of bed and went downstairs to help him entertain, tissue held t...

                Last weekend Fern Forest Treehouse guests James and Dorothy let us know in advance of their arrival that they are nongluten vegans who eat only organic food (James signed his request to stay in the treehouse "Namaste"). Wanting to please, H went online and looked up recipes for nongluten vegan breakfasts. He shopped at a natural foods market for organic fruits, rice flour pancake mix, buckwheat bread, powdered egg substitute and soy milk. He was armed and ready to meet dietary requirements.                I got ready for the visitors by giving up gluten to see what it felt like. A friend told me I’d lose weight almost instantly, which was good incentive to get rid of the ten pounds of flour I’ve been carrying around my middle for the last couple years.                  I sampled the buckwheat raisin bread H boug...

I’m pressed against a baby carriage that is wedgeded against a metal barrier. A baby is asleep in the carriage. The afternoon sun is bright, and I adjust my body to cast a shadow over the child. Her sweet talcum scent rises from the carriage. The mother, a redhead, is fair and has a long white scarf over her head and shoulders to shield her from the Parisian sun. There is no shade, and I feel my skin burning.                 We are shoulder to shoulder, chest to back—thousands of us. I’ve been standing in Place des Pyramides for an hour waiting for bicyclists to roll over the finish line in the Tour de France race. Across the road, a crowd of Swiss sing a song in German or Austrian—yell it, really—and wave flags.                 The baby is crying and the back of the redhead mother’s neck is red. She has had too much sun. My throat is dry. The boy beside me—he’s...

Let’s call him Andy, for starters. He’s a special educator, hates his job, saves his money and quits. He’s never been to Ireland, where his parents are from, so he finds a cheap flight and gets on the plane. The answer for his dead-end life, he thinks, is finding an Irish wife. Maybe he has read Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s poem, “The Irish Wife,” with the stanza: My Irish wife has clear blue eyes,            My heaven by day, my stars by night; And twin-like truth and fondness lie   Within her swelling bosom white My Irish wife has golden hair,   Apollo’s harp had once such strings,          Apollo’s self might pause to hear   Her bird-like carol when she sings. Or maybe he knows the Irish are known for story-telling, a sense of humor and love of family. Their hearts are warm, their dispo...

Now that Fern Forest Treehouse has taken a bite out of the Apple (check out the web developers video at http://www.apple.com/ios/videos/#developers ), it’s time to polish up the old blog again. Our most recent guests were Alexandra and Mike from west of Boston. Alexandra was living in Manhattan as a set designer and traveled with a touring production of The King and I , which landed in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Mike, a Green Bay local, happened to be filling in backstage on the same show. Alexandra saw him. She gave him orders. He did what she told him. Then she noticed. He was awfully good looking. Uh-huh. Mike is a self-starter. When he was 17, he started a haunted house design business, building haunting displays, hiring actors to put on gory makeup and scare people. He had no plans to leave Wisconsin, so Alexandra gave up her New York apartment and moved to Green Bay, no easy task for a die-hard Patriots fan. She never took to the Packers, but Mike forgave her. His haunted ho...

‘Tis summer and work in the gardens has taken me away from the computer. Fern Forest Treehouse has not taken a break, however. New Yorkers love to get out of the city during the sweltering season, and Vermont is a favorite destination. In the past week we've had back-to-back Brooklynites. Josh is from L.A. and Laura’s from Florida, but they drove up from New York in a rental car with Texas license plates. Josh works on the television show “Law and Order,” and Laura fundraises for the Tribecca Film Festival. She’s also a musician and has played clarinet in orchestras. They’re quiet folks. And they like to sleep. Both work until 7:00 or 8:00 at night, then they go to the gym and finally have dinner at 10:00 or 11:00. They’re lucky to get to bed by 1:00 a.m. and use weekends to catch up on sleep. When we got them the latest reservation at the Bobcat, they were a little appalled at having to eat as early as 8:30 p.m. H and I eat at 6:00, dishes washed by 6:45, and by 8:00, he’...