Growing up, my favorite book was My Side of the Mountain. I read it and re-read it until it was in tatters. I would make a sandwich, stuff it in my backpack and tell my mom I was going to go live off the land. Then I would go into the woods behind our house and work on my lean-to. In the book, Sam found a large tree with a hollow that he made into his home. When I think of a treehouse, I think of such a place, situated in the heart of a tree, rather than something up in the branches.

It was in a recent google search for ‘tree hollow’ that I found a tree that really can be a home, and is in fact such a large tree, which such a huge hollow, that one has been made into a pub. Be still, my heart.

Despite my determination to fend for myself in the wild, I was only ever out for a couple of hours before coming back to the house. But in my mind, I lived there – foraging for wild edibles, chatting with the squirrels, and wrapping myself in tree fronds, curled under the solid embrace of a friendly oak.