Treehouse builder is no longer out on a limb

Web posted November 13, 1998

By Jeff Barnard

TAKILMA, Ore. -- Treehouse hotelier Michael Garnier is finally coming in from the cold.

For eight years, Garnier built whimsical and ever-more-elaborate treehouses on his property without zoning approval or building permits. Then he came up with a legal dodge that allowed him to charge guests $70 to $125 a night to sleep up among the branches.

He went so far as to rig a getaway cable from the bedroom of his conventional house so he could scramble up to his personal treehouse in case sheriff's deputies ever came to arrest him.

But after $20,000 worth of engineering studies, court rulings and agency findings, Garnier has finally satisfied Josephine County that treehouses can be safe for paying guests. And with a little paperwork and some permit fees, he will finally be legit.

The prospect is actually kind of disappointing to Garnier and some of the thousands of people who have come to this hippie enclave in the Siskiyou Mountains to fulfill their childhood fantasies of living in a tree.

``He's going straight? Oh, heavens!'' said Diane Cassidy of Kirkland, Wash. ``Being illegit is such an integral part of Michael.''

As Ferron Mayfield, a fishing guide from Merlin, said after his stay: ``I'm a little naughty myself, and I enjoyed that outlaw aspect.''

Garnier, a 50-year-old former Green Beret medic who used to work at a health clinic for hippies and run a traveling medicine show on the counterculture fair circuit, designed and built his first bed-and-breakfast treehouse in 1990.

Now there are nine of them. And not those ramshackle, plywood-and-two-by-four eyesores that any kid with a hammer can put together, either.

The Peacock, perched in some white oaks, has a double bed, a sink and a chamber pot and is reached by a three-story staircase. The Swiss Family Robinson Suite has French doors and a fireman's pole and is connected by a swinging bridge to a little treehouse for the kids.

The Tree Room Schoolhouse boasts a bathroom with claw-footed tub, a kitchenette, queen-size bed and a wraparound deck.

Folks can also stay in the Tree-Pee -- a teepee in a tree -- and play in the Caval-Tree, a stockade in the sky, and the Pirate-Tree, a ship-shaped platform that swings from cables.

From the start, building authorities were not amused, and they took Garnier to court.

When Garnier was told he could not accept paying guests, he reached deep into his medicine show bag of tricks: He pretended that his guests at his Out 'N' About Treesort were sleepover friends (``Tree Musketeers''), and sold them T-shirts (or ``tree-shirts'') that happened to cost $70 or more.

The county said it couldn't issue him permits because there is no building code applicable to a structure whose foundation is a tree. But state authorities ulitimately said the county must grant Garnier a permit if he can demonstrate through stress tests that his treehouses are safe.

Among other things, Garnier piled 66 people, two dogs, and a cat into one treehouse to show that it could handle 10,847 pounds. He also showed his treehouses could withstand 80 mph winds, but only after installed metal stilts to support them.

``He's a hero,'' said author and treehouse builder Peter Nelson of Seattle. ``He pioneered this whole permit issue for all of us. That was more than a battle. It was a war.''

There are no hard feelings, county counsel Steve Rich said.

``We didn't have any intent to bludgeon anybody with this,'' he said. ``If he can be a successful businessman and generate tourism for the local economy, that's fine.''

Now that he is about to go legitimate, Garnier wistfully recalls the old days.

``You meet a lot of interesting people who are willing to stay someplace that is not quite legal,'' he said.