“I built this hut in the bush using naturally occurring materials and primitive tools. The hut is 2m wide and 2m long, the side walls are 1m high and the ridge line (highest point) is 2m high giving a roof angle of 45 degrees. A bed was built inside and it takes up a little less than half the hut. The tools used were a stone hand axe to chop wood, fire sticks to make fire, a digging stick for digging and clay pots to carry water. The materials used in the hut were wood for the frame, vine and lawyer cane for lashings and mud for daubing. Broad leaves were initially used as thatch which worked well for about four months before starting to rot. The roof was then covered with sheets of paper bark which proved to be a better roofing material. An external fireplace and chimney were also built to reduce smoke inside. The hut is a small yet comfortable shelter and provides room to store tools and materials out of the weather.…”

Sent by Jon Kalish

You get to the first treehouse (where Foster lives) up a steep ladder, then from here, up a glue-lam-beam curved staircase to a middle hexagonal platform (where in the photo of Foster, we were sitting and watching the sun set over the tree tops). From there it’s a bouncy (scary) cable walkway to the upper hexagonal treehouse (2nd photo), where I slept in the loft. Carpentry everywhere is meticulous—tight joints. even of compound miters. This ain’t scruffy hippy carpentry.

I’m just starting to work my next book, Small Homes, and still swamped catching up with all the notes I made to my recent trips to NYC and Oregon. My problem right now is too much “content.”

An example is Foster Huntington’s quite incredible compound built on a knoll in the Columbia River Gorge, about 45 minutes northeast of Portland. I wish I had time to do a feature article on this treehouse/skate park/hot tub complex that has a 360° view, which includes the (white) tip of Mount Hood and the Multnomah Falls (500+ feet tall)—I’ll get around to it eventually.

In coming days I’ll put up photos from my visit with Foster. If you’re interested, here are a couple of links to Foster’s latest projects, a film on Vimeo chronicling the months of treehouse construction, as well as his KickStarter campaign for a book on the same subject, which has already generated (ulp!) $58,000 (his goal was $30,0000).

https://vimeo.com/129335481

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fosterhuntington/the-cinder-cone-build-book