![]() ![]() ![]() It’s through falling off a bicycle that children learn to balance, he explains. With every scribble and drawing, the tree house becomes even more their own.Īs a society, we are overly eager to protect our children, Ripple says. Her favorite part, though, is being able to color on the walls, which have been coated with dry-erase paint. There are two entrances, three suspension bridges, a 25-foot crow’s nest, a 120-foot-long zip-line, a fireman’s pole, a trapeze, three swings that dangle from an 18-foot-high cable, and a kettle ball-shaped swing, which Lucy, age 3, navigates with ease. Looking like something straight out of Swiss Family Robinson, the Ripple tree house is only one component of this child-friendly fitness complex. Having previous tree house-building experience helped, too. Having both a carpenter and an architect in the family, Ripple was confident in his ability to design a space his family would love. When he and his wife Jan started building their Highland Road house, they envisioned a home their entire family-including their three grown children and nine young grandchildren-could enjoy.Īn advocate for outdoor play, Ripple wanted to give the little ones a place where they could safely explore, play and entertain themselves. Steven Ripple, who sits on the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, extends his passion for fun and fitness to his grandchildren. Emily would love a second-tier reading nook, but that she would have to get past Mom’s veto power first. He and the girls are considering adding a retractable, partial roof. Knight sees their family’s tree house as an ongoing project, a work in progress. The girls created a dumbwaiter to haul books and art supplies back and forth. Emily thinks the tree house is a great place to read, and Katie finds her artistic muse in the tree branches. Now, with cooler weather, the girls use the tree house quite a bit, especially when friends come over to play. He’d remind them that when they stopped working, he would, too. He wanted the tree house to be something he would build with rather than for them-a real family project.Īs children do, the girls would get tired long before he did. He enlisted the help of his girls, then ages 9 and 12. This time around, Knight headed to the local library, looking for a plan that would work well with a single tree. When he was much younger, he and his older brother had built their own tree houses out of scrap wood. This time, Knight found himself giving a different answer. But then they asked again, and Knight happened to be in the middle of Rich Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, a book about today’s nature-deprived youth. It just never seemed to be the “right weekend” for such an involved project. If we observe carefully, we can hear the whispered secrets of childhood itself.įor years, Skully Knight’s two girls, Emily and Katie, asked for a tree house. Looking up into these miniature domiciles, we adults can see more than a temporary housing facility for children at play. ![]()
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