A Treehouse, a little you-and-me house

The bombing at the Boston Marathon finish line shocked the world once again, and so soon after the school shootings in Sandy Hook. I’ve lived through other violence—assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the killing of John Lennon, the Oklahoma bombing, the Twin Towers assault. It’s tempting to look at the darkness and feel despair. But there’s another option. One blogger noted that more people were running toward yesterday’s mayhem than away from it. Citizens took off shirts to use as tourniquets. No one worried about getting hands dirty with someone else’s blood. The immediate response of most people nearby was to help. In four years of hosting guests in our treehouse nearly every weekend, we have not had a single negative experience. We’ve hosted Jews, Muslims and devout Christians, white and black Africans, Chinese and Japanese, gays and straights, an ex-convict, and a firefighter who had just come from honoring his fellow firefighters...

     I could write a volume about last weekend's Treehouse guests: Mom Jessica, Dad Will, their two children, and puppy Peanut. Will, handsomely Cuban by heritage, is an accountant born in the year of the Dog, which makes him inherently agreeable and likable. Jessica, of French Canadian ancestry, has a sense of wanderlust not held back by family and canine. She and Will acquired Peanut a decade ago when they bought a house in Los Angeles and jokingly told the sellers they'd take the house if they'd throw in the dog. They did, and Peanut has been with them ever since.       Jessica owns Cucumber Design Company and does most of her work online so she can travel anywhere she can access wifi. When their daughter came along, they moved to New York City and enrolled her in an international school to learn French. Their son followed a few years later, and they moved to Boston to be closer to Jessica's family in Maine. Their hope is to live in France for a fe...

By Saturday morning,  S é bastien  was still undecided about whether to drive the Porsche up from Albany or get his girlfriend Stephanie to take her Hyundai. The weather forecast promised snow in Vermont—a lot of it. But he does love to drive that Boxter. It’s low and fast, a sleek black panther with a cabriolet top for warm, hair blown days. The car’s as exotic as  S é bastien . He’s got that tall, dark French handsomeness about him. Born just outside Paris, he still speaks with a delightful accent even after a decade working in the states. He’s got a PhD in computer science, and I like a guy who gets what I’m saying before I finish saying it. “You’ll need a reservation for dinner at the Bobcat….” And he’s found the number on his phone and is already dialing. Dinner at 7:45, which gave us plenty of time to chat before he and Stephanie slipped and slid down the driveway.         Working as a biomedical engineer is  S é bastien 's...

It’s odd how treehouse guests not only share a bit of themselves when they visit but also act as mirrors for H and me. Each time we have a new guest, we see our view of Mt. Abe in a new light. I look around at H’s beautiful handcrafted lamps as if for the first time. Instead of taking our surroundings for granted, I feel the peacefulness of the forest around us.             Our last treehouse guest, Kimberly, is a makeup artist and has done makeup for stars and models like Naomi Campbell. Since she moved from Florida to Massachusetts, Kimberly’s main clients are brides and bridal parties, prom dates and once in a while a birthday party for thirteen-year-olds.             The evening Kimberly arrived with her handsome boyfriend Phil, I wasn’t wearing makeup. Usually I’ll brush on some mascara, but I feel overdressed in blush and lipstick here in the wilderness. I’m lucky i...

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...