We are Animals at Home

I watch Kaliko walk along the branch and Andrew hang off of another, and I see people that are completely comfortable in the tree. They are so at home that they could be monkeys that spent their lives swinging from branches. The people that love climbing trees and making tree houses often end up in houses that are made with similar attributes as a tree. There are ladders, lofts, big windows, and places that height-fearing-people would never want to go in a monkey-person's home. I can see Kaliko in her future home full of such things.

Friday night I saw a house on stilts about fifteen feet above a river walking along Broadway Street. The house looked like something out of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It intrigued me because I loved it and feared it at the same time. How could something like that be stable? How could you sleep there? Someone does live there, and someone designed the house intending to live in it. The house looked like the home of a falcon: almost a nest on a cliff where the dwellers could perch and watch the river go by.

And, there are so many other types of people: frog-people who prefer swamp land next to a pond with bugs and tall grass, bear-people with their cave-like homes, and mountain goats with houses perched on rocky hills. We all have these natural habitat tendencies that are squashed by beigeville homes (suburbs with the same house over and over) and dorm rooms that all look alike.