Girt By Tree

My friend Wilkins wants to move into a tree. Yes, I know – that was my response too (I’m assuming your eyebrows are raised). I mean, I get the general point. You get to sleep under the stars, unfettered by the trappings of the built environment. I just can’t help but feel he hasn’t fully thought through all the logistics.

 

For starters, how is he going to stop himself from falling out of the tree while he’s asleep? I guess he could build some sort of platform. What about getting rained on? He could build some sort of roof over the platform, sure. But at that point you’re getting into house territory, and I’m not sure how sustainable it is to go around building tree houses in the bush or neighbourhood commons. Someone’s bound to come and put a stop to it at some point, and then you’ve gone and wasted a bunch of effort.

 

That’s just the beginning. How’s Wilkins going to hold down his job as chief financial officer of a large banking institution if he’s sleeping in a tree? He says he’ll wipe himself down with dew-moistened leaves each morning, but that seems a bit far fetched to me. Where will he store his clothes?  

 

This is almost as silly as the time he said he was going to revolutionise the profession of conveyancing within Elwood, as if that was something that anyone could just up and do. Wilkins might have a head for numbers and figures, and a good deal of business sense, but he has no legal training and no more understanding of property conveyancing than the next person. In that situation, as with the current one, he didn’t have any especially compelling reasons to embark on the project. 

 

I’m not sure why, but Wilkins seems prone to getting swept up in ideas at the expense of common sense. It’s as though he doesn’t even give it a second thought – the first idea that comes to mind is the one he’s going to pursue as though it was always his greatest ambition. It’s weird.