Essay by Susan Hess
A tree house needs children. This spring Jurgen and I began planning how best to dismantle ours and move it to the Gorge Rebuild-it Center, where we hoped some family would find it. Before we started taking it down, Matthew Barmann came over to look at our yard’s native plantings. As he and Jurgen walked the backyard path that curves by the tree house, Jurgen told him about our plan?reuse on a giant scale.
Paikea and Jonah in the treehouse
Without hesitation, Matthew asked if he could have it. “Sure, but it’ll be a while, because we have company coming, and after that, classes to teach.” Then Matthew’s family went on vacation. Then we had to travel to Eastern Oregon. When we got back, we had a garage sale. Summer days grew fewer.
Our doorbell rang one sleepy Sunday afternoon in July. Matthew, wife Nicole, son Jonah, and daughter Paikea stood there. Matthew wanted to show them the tree house. Jonah, 10, and Paikea, 4, flew up the treehouse?s narrow stairs. After inspection, Jonah ran to scale a nearby tree. Paikea ran in and out of the backyard paths: behind trees, around the vegetable garden, on the winding path by the ferns. The treehouse needed them, children full of energy and curiosity.
The guys plotted how to take it apart. Could they get the roof off in one piece? Could the floor be saved? How best to mark each piece so it goes back together? How much help would they need?
Paikea, Nicole and I left them to their plotting and went in the house. Inside opened a new adventure for Paikea. She ran down the hall, into bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, living room, office, utility room, and peered into every closet. When Matthew and Jurgen had a plan for disassemble-day, we gathered on the front steps, all but Paikea.
She came out minutes later holding a stuffed puffin—a stuffed toy she took out of a bag toy birds we planned to use as contest prizes. She looked up me with that look small children get that says: “I know I shouldn’t take this, but unless you stop me, I’m going to take it.”
Paikea and the puffin pick up litter.
I bent down. “Paikea, you can’t take it, but you can earn it. If you help your mom and dad, plant some flowers or pick up some trash, you can earn it.”
“Pi, we can go down to that spot at the end of our street,” her mom said. “There’s always trash there, and we haven’t picked it up for a while.”
The next morning Jurgen and I went out to breakfast. Driving back we arrived home just as Matthew and tiny Paikea bicycled into our driveway. Paikea resplendent in tutu and essential bike helmet climbed down clutching the puffin in one arm, and presented me with a plastic bag packed with litter.
A week later, Matthew and carpenter friend Joe arrived early with work clothes, hammers, drills, saws, and an empty trailer. It took the three men all that hot summer day to dismantle the seven-foot square, story-and-a-half-high building. It’s solid, and it’s not a tree house as much as a house among trees. Four eight-inch round timbers hold it aloft.
The roof came off in one piece. Window, walls, floor, timbers came down and hoisted into the trailer—everything but the heavy roof. Matthew returned a week later with four men. The roof required all five to lift it, angle it between trees, inch it past the living room window, around the corner to a faithful trailer.
Just blocks down the street, the treehouse now stands regal in its new home, sheltered by cedars, filled with toys and small children creating their own world.
Moving the roof was not so easy.
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I love this story. Paikea looks very proud of her picked up litter AND has puffin in hand.