Tree Fort

I've always loved building forts- it is in my blood.  To back up a little, building forts started with Chuck Norris movies (Delta Force 1 through 3) and the movie Red Dawn.  My friends and I saw these movies and immediately formed our militia appropriately named Delta Force. Our mission was simple, prepare for war.  The enemy was usually Russia in our minds, since the Cold War was recent and if we ever needed to be reminded of the threat we would just watch Red Dawn.  Looking back at how we handled preparations, the preparations were similar to that of the government. We built a fort (base), set-up security, stockpiled weapons, and practiced.  

The forts were in a hard to find location, had multiple rooms, could be locked down, and always had an escape opening.  

At the age of 13 I had already accumulated an cache of weapons: knives (the Rambo inspired one, butterfly, switch blade, swiss army), machetes, pellet guns, bull-whip, wrist-rocket, blow-dart gun).  The blow-dart guns, my friend Jordan and I ordered from an ad at the back of a Popular Mechanics magazine we read during a 15 minute forced reading time in Junior High.  We sent cash and coins in the mail and to my moms' surprise, a UPS truck pulled up with a huge package addressed to Brett Cain.  I'm glad she let us keep them. 

We never intended to practice for war, but looking back at our activities they could have by training for a elite special ops team. To name few, which usually took place in the foothills of the bay area: wrestling at night in full camo while rolling down the hills, mudsliding, using zip-lines, going into the golf course at night in wetsuits gathering golf balls in the lake so we could sell them the next day so we could buy more weapons, ice-blocking at the same golf course, trying to act suspicious in the neighborhood at night so someone would call the cops so we could hide from them, riding a raft during heavy rains in the run-off creek out to the bay, building a boat, climbing and rappelling huge Oak trees. 

I was only going to post the pictures of the fort my son and I are building, but I got really excited reliving my childhood for a little bit.  I'm hoping he is going to have some great memories in it and the other ones he builds as he gets older.  

Check out this cool tree. It had some sort of an infection that created a spiral decay up the trunk. I thought it would be hard to hollow out, but with a chain saw, hammer, and pry-bar it didn't take long.  I formed the floor of the tree fort and left an opening for a trap-door that can be accessed by climbing up the middle of the tree. I'm still trying to figure out how to make it easy for a 4 year old to climb up the inside. I'll post more pictures as we progress over the next few weekends.