treehouse dreams

Every childhood has a treehouse.

Every childhood has a treehouse. Maybe it’s in your backyard, or your friend’s backyard. Maybe it’s in the town center. Maybe it’s in the book you escaped into every night. Maybe it’s in the blanket fort in the living room — the couch as the trunk, the blanket as the canopy, and the string lights as the leaves.

Every childhood has a treehouse.

Up in a treehouse, we were not of our normal human world and all its heavy entanglements — the homework, traffic lights, blaring horns, chores, fights, and fears. In a treehouse, we are able to leave the world of “down below” and enter a new one. In this world, the water on the leaves are sparkles. The squirrel bounding across the branches has a name, a home, and a family that loves him. The rickety wooden platform that you stand upon is not a wooden platform at all — it is a palace, of which you reign, and the sprawling houses and neighborhoods down below are the size of mere ants from your royal perch.

Every adult knows that a treehouse is not meant to be practical or convenient. It is a structure, built high up in the air, tucked into and around the ever-changing intricacies of a living ecosystem. But, kids don’t burden themselves with matters of practicality and convenience. Soon enough, the grip of adulthood will find them, but a treehouse can buoy them to wonder and whimsy for just a little bit longer. It is a special and rare thing for something so pure, so latched to play, and so wholly and entirely inconvenient to have persisted this long. But, there is some magic there. As kids, we knew it. And as adults, maybe we are beginning to remember.

We nestle ourselves into a treehouse, and we have found a launching pad for imagination.

All images from Pinterest.