The client asked for one thing: a spot where their kids could watch the ridge line turn orange in October without climbing higher than a fire ladder would allow. The oak leaned eleven degrees off plumb, which most builders would have rejected outright. We built the platform to float independent of the trunk on three galvanized brackets, letting the tree keep swaying the way a 90-year-old oak is entitled to.
The turret window came from a demolished grain elevator in Barre — thick, faintly green glass that bends the view of the valley just slightly, like looking through a bottle. Inside, there's a single bench long enough for two kids or one adult who has given up on being anywhere else.
A 40-foot rope bridge connects the treehouse to a second, smaller crow's nest in the neighboring maple, low enough that the whole structure sways about an inch in a strong wind. That was intentional. Stillness would have made it feel like furniture instead of a tree.