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Pete Nelson, who runs Treehouse Point in Fall City, Wash., built a treehouse without a permit. Nelson admits he built the treehouse without a permit from the county, saying, "It probably wasn't the right thing to do." The county has a file a couple of inches thick on Nelson...The county found out after Nelson cut down a tree and was caught doing it by a neighbor. That neighbor reported Nelson to the county — and the truth came out.

LAFAYETTE — The three treehouses would be nestled into the branches of a mighty oak, just as in a Disney movie, with steps up the tree's trunk and a bridge to a nearby house.A Pixar writer and director dreamed up this idea — not for his next movie, but for his family's next house.He and his wife bought 15 acres of secluded, vacant land in Lafayette and proposed a 60-foot-tall artificial oak tree with three treehouses. A suspension bridge would link them to a new house on the adjacent hill. An elevator would connect the house to a garage 25...

Man starves himself to death in treehouse By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Last Updated: 1:48am GMT 14/02/2008 A man in Germany has committed suicide by hiding deep in a forest and starving himself to death. The man, who has not been named, kept a diary as his life ebbed away. Police said that two hunters had found the decaying corpse of the 58-year-old man in an isolated hide. It was discovered in a make-shift treehouse 16ft off the ground in a forest about 60 miles from his hometown of Hanover. By his body was a chronicle of the 24...

CRAWFORD Cindy Sheehan says she’s taking a hiatus from her activist role to heal and re-energize herself after a trying and torrid summer. Most of the 100 or so anti-war demonstrators who joined her this year had left her peace camp in Crawford by the close of the Labor Day weekend. This year’s protest gathered little steam in Crawford. Bush, who usually spends the entire month of August at his nearby ranch, cut his vacation to 10 days. Sheehan looked tired and moved slowly when she granted a brief interview to the Tribune-Herald. Her son, Andy, 22, sat with her....

Words are good for kidshttp://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=10444 Sunday, July 30, 2006 The other night I was telling my son a story about my tree fort. I hadn't thought about the place in years. But every time I give my son P.J. a bath, I'm flooded with the memory of the place. The scent of Johnson & Johnson shampoo sends me back to my childhood, when my mother used to bathe us in Tide. Yes, Tide, the abrasive laundry detergent with the little aqua grains. It sounds punishing, but the truth is, my mother had little choice. By the time my brothers and...

Did you build a tree house when you were a kid? While your home in the branches probably wasn't an architectural wonder, you probably had a memorable time planning, acquiring the materials and building it. You likely felt competent and in control, making adjustments as the structure progressed. Kids are driven to take on such a project because it somehow satisfies their need to utilize their growing developmental skills. They're able to try building a structure they've fantasized about living in or at least sleeping in on a warm summer night. While doing so, they imagine whether they'd be lonely...