Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Honeymoon in a Treehouse


There is a romance to intimate spaces. Their very smallness brings people closer. When the small space is lifted into the trees, it becomes a human nest.

The treehouse is not the same as a ground house lifted as if by levitation into the trees, but a structure built into the trees themselves. Support elements called Garnier Limbs are bolts designed specifically to make the structure a part of the living trees themselves. The trees continue to grow around the bolts.

This treehouse is built over a lava tube, where centuries past, the liquid lava poured out of Kilauea Volcano, and bubbled up. Sometime during the cooling process, the bubble collapsed, and trees grew where their roots had aeration. Mosses and ferns cling to the sides, where water drips down from the misty rainforest atmosphere.

A cedar hot tub is seated on a platform settled on the lava tube, and rising into the first deck. This hot tub is perfect for two. In the day time, you are surrounded by birds. At night, the stars wink through the canopy not just overhead, but all around you, up high on the mountain.

This small space has a lot of built in romance, and even a hammock for two out the front, down below.

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