Last of the Tree Fort
Well, Monday marked the last day of the tree fort (the real one. not the blog). It was to the point where I didn’t feel safe climbing onto it, so I figured it was time to take it down. The only problem was that when it was put up, I had the old tree fort to stand on. The old tree fort wasn’t there to take it down, though. That made taking the newer tree fort down complicated. I decided to cut the all the sub-main supports, letting the tree fort rest on the one main support. That worked. I then cut the main support letting the tree fort fall to the ground. That didn’t work. The tree fort fell alright, but got hung up between a branch lower down and a rope that runs horizontal through the tree. So the tree fort was hanging in mid air where I couldn’t get it the rest of the way down safely. What’s more, is that it was in the way of my getting down. I decided to try pulling the tree fort off the rope by throwing the lariat around the fort and pulling. But first I had to get myself down. I made the longest stretch I could, and managed to get from one trunk to the other, where I could get down.
Pulling the fort off the rope didn’t work, so I decided to pull the rope out from under the fort. I got my grappling hook. That didn’t work either…
I had one more option. That was to push the tree fort off the branch of the tree. That option was a little more risky. It was possible that when the fort went off the branch, it would flip up and hit me. If that were to happen, I would go down with it… about 15 feet to the ground onto a bed of boards with nails in them.
Thankfully, the fort went down with no problem. And I made it to the ground in a safe manner. 