Forever Young builds “ladders to the stars” that any child can climb on.
By Danielle Shaw
At Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, if you stray a little off the beaten path, you will find yourself in the woods.
Among the trees, it is dark, quiet, and serene. Up ahead you’ll see a paved path and then a gently sloping wooden ramp up to a rustic house in the trees.
Named Lookout Loft, this 720-square-foot, Adirondack-style treehouse is fully ADA accessible. The first viewing platform is covered with a trellis, and the second is covered by a sunroof for viewing the trees. Lookout Loft was designed by Forever Young Treehouses of Burlington, Vermont, a 501c3 corporation whose goal is to build at least one accessible treehouse in every U.S. state.
“A treehouse is a childhood place, a place of escape,” says James “B’fer” Roth, the lead treehouse designer and builder for Forever Young. “Every child should have that feeling.”
All About the Kids
When he tells people he builds treehouses, he says, “Some people think, ‘Why bother?’ But we do it because it’s all about being a kid. Being up in a treehouse is a normal part of being a kid. We want to make that happen for all kids.”
With experience as a rustic furniture maker, Roth has been with Forever Young since the beginning. The idea for the accessible treehouses came about in 1998 when financial advisor Bill Allen, the founder, who is since retired, was building a treehouse with his friend, Phil Trabulsky, MD, a surgeon, at Trabulsky’s house. Allen and Trabulsky were board members and fundraisers for the Make-a-Wish a Foundation of Vermont, and while building, they began to realize that some of the kids they worked with would have trouble accessing a treehouse.
The two amateur treehouse builders contacted the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont, where Roth was working as an instructor in design and building. They had found the right place—Roth was a big lover of treehouses who had even lived in one for five summers.
“My first date with my future wife was a lunch date in the treehouse,” he says.
Newman’s Own Treehouse
In the fall of 2000, the group built a prototype at the edge of the woods on Yestermorrow’s campus. “We showed that we could successfully build a wheelchair ramp up to a treehouse,” Roth explains.
They started Forever Young Treehouses, and over the next few years, they built one treehouse a year, starting out in camps for children with disabilities. Then they built their first public treehouse in Oakledge Park in Burlington, Vermont. Forever Young’s biggest project has been a treehouse at Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Connecticut, for children with cancer and blood disorders. This treehouse, which sits in the woods with a view of a pond below, was designed to look like an “Old West outlaw hideout.” At 4,000 square feet total, it has an elaborate 340foot ramp and is linked to 23 trees.
Building the treehouse at Paul Newman’s camp was a great springboard to more opportunities for Forever Young, with coverage on The Today Show, in the Wall Street Journal and People magazine, and many others. They built three or four treehouses a year after 2004 and have now done 29 projects in 16 states, with many more to come.
The staff take turns running different projects and are complemented by combinations of paid and volunteer local builders.
“It’s great when you have local help,” Roth explains. “The community plugs in and has a greater sense of ownership. It’s a good feeling when you get a lot of people who rally together. Then they take better care of it, too.”
Unique Shelters
Roth explains that many considerations go into building a treehouse. “The fun thing is that no two sites are the same, no two arrangements are the same,” he says, “Each site presents different challenges.”
First, it is important to select the right trees. Mature trees that will not expand too much in the framework work well. The site is also important, especially for installation of the ADA accessible ramps, which work well on sloped hillsides leading up to the trees.
“A lot of the design is geared to the shape of trees, geared by nature,” says Roth. “We like to incorporate natural elements.” He points out that the Lookout Loft treehouse includes trees with “forked branches and all kinds of uniquely shaped trees.” To add character, “We build the treehouses of the trees,” he explains, and often use reclaimed forest materials in the construction.
“I can’t express how good it makes me feel,” Roth says. “It is not only artistically satisfying from a craftsman’s standpoint, but spiritually satisfying as well.
“It is so gratifying seeing a person using a wheelchair cutting the ribbon [at the treehouse opening] and wheeling on up, grinning ear to ear. . . . We know we’ve done something right.”
Roth says that the treehouses were “all about thinking about kids at first,” but a bonus has been that many elderly people enjoy them as well. “Whether they have a disability or not, being in one of our treehouses 40 or 50 years later can rekindle childhood memories for them. . . It is very satisfying to see them unleashing their childhood feelings.
“There is no better place to make you feel like a kid than a treehouse,” he says. In fact, the name of Forever Young Treehouses was inspired by the Bob Dylan song “Forever Young,” which includes the lyrics: “Build a ladder to the stars, climb on every rung, may you stay forever young.”
As Roth says, “I can’t think of a place that makes me daydream better than a treehouse.”
For more on Forever Young Treehouses, visit www.treehouses.org.
Danielle Shaw is a freelance editor and writer from Pennsylvania. She can be reached at twxee@aol.com.
