Treehouse in the Mountain

Skylar is turning 31 thousand, or so you'd think the way he complained about his aching "dainty ankles" today when we went snowshoeing for a few hours in some mountains 40 minutes from our house. 

We decided to retreat to this place after Sky's parents found an absolutely adorable treehouse turned into an airbnb here and gave us a gift card for it. It's Sky's birthday this coming weekend so we booked the only two days available for this place in the next many months to come and headed eastward on Tuesday afternoon.

The treehouse is truly off the beaten path. Far into the snowpacked back canyons beyond Park City. The instructions on how to get here, as provided by the owners, were essentially, "do not use gps, for the great explorers of our time have yet to chart this corner of the earth. Drive east until you see a large tree that looks like a bear then take the second star to the right, straight on til morning."

Beyond that, the directions did come with some terrifying warnings that were basically "you will absolutely die if you try to drive here in anything other than an army tank. We mean it. Unless the national guard is prepared to life-flight you into the treehouse, make your peace with God and don't plan to see your family again."

We took Sky's Subaru because of the four-wheel drive and we bought chains for the tires, just in case. When we got to the "beaten path" portion of our journey, it didn't seem like we needed the chains. It was a sunny day, it hasn't snowed much this winter, and we were only three miles away from our destination.

Well, Stranger, what we next encountered was the actual bobsled track used for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics. At several points we almost careened off of the road. I saw the spirit of Nancy Kerrigan and heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing at one point. When I got too scared to keep looking, the ghost of Mitt Romney took the wheel.

Because we were driving straight up a twisting ice rink, I didn't dare stop the car to put on the chains. I was certain if we didn't keep momentum, we would slide to our deaths. And I don't want to die having never met Cher ten times.

Pre-bobsled track Eli and Skylar of yesteryear while planning this trip were like "and then we'll frivolously drive down to Park City once or twice to get ice cream or something! It will be great!" But the moment we parked the car on flat ground in front of the treehouse, we decided this is where we shall lay to rest until the great polar bear in the sky calls us home. I think. I haven't been to church in a while so I'm not sure how it all works anymore.

The treehouse is amazing. It sits on the backside of Mount Something-or-Other. Since we are at such high altitude that this is technically considered outer space, there are about three or four feet of snow surrounding us. 

The treehouse sits up on stilts and includes two stories, connected by a very steep and dangerous set of ladder stairs. The place is pretty tiny, and the owners did what they could to maximize space, including this interesting choice:

When Sky saw this he gasped and said "how efficient! The sink is in the shower! It's the bathroom for the modern working girl!" And I fell the hell in love with him all over again.

The place is gorgeous, and includes incredible views of snow-blanketed mountains on all four sides.

The bed includes an incredible and large window above it so you can watch the stars as you fall asleep. And since we are exactly eleventy trillion miles from the closest human being, we could see the full Milky Way, and y'all, it's quite pretty.

And while we love this treehouse with every fiber of our beings and we've written it into our wills so that it now must split our collection of 20th century lava lamps with Duncan and the cast of The Facts of Life (DON'T ASK), this place has one extremely alarming feature. There is a giant hole in the floor next to the bed. This hole was created for the ladder stairs. See supra. 

pic.twitter.com/xnFyjhzVw2

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) January 6, 2021

I 100% expected my life to end through that hole. I considered that hole to be a portal to the afterlife for Eli McCann. And I told Skylar this. "I'm going to fall through that in the middle of the night when I get up to go to the bathroom," which is a thing that happens every night and nobody warned me that would start happening in my mid-30s and I'm very angry about this. In my 20s? In my 20s I peed like twice a month. And only because I was bored. Now? I have a constant river running through my body. I swear I pee 35 times more than I drink. It's a scientific miracle that should be studied by NASA.

Skylar agreed that this was a death trap for me so we spent a good portion of our bedtime routine time placing barricades between a potential stupor-walking Eli and the architectural terrorist on the floor of the room where we planned to sleep for two nights. 

The barricade worked, and I only hit my shins like five times. But I've lived to tell the tale. 

We spent the afternoon trying not to be glued to the television to watch the absolutely disgusting insanity unfolding in DC thanks to the president and his mob of mouth-breathing idiots, and instead snowshoed our way through the mountains, like we were living Frozen's version of The Sound of Music.

Happy birthday, Skyman. This weekend I probably better sit you down and share with you the unfortunate next steps for your changing body as you proceed into your 30s.

~It Just Gets Stranger