Man on Legal Limb Over Treehouse

TAKILMA, Ore. — Michael Garnier is no stranger to selling snake oil.

For years he worked the West Coast hippie-fair circuit as Dr. Birch’s Traveling Medicine Show, using alliterative patter to peddle an unplugged psychedelic light show, the Yankee Doodle picture propeller, and empty boxes of breakfast cereal called Fantasy Flakes.

“Not your normal serial with nothing in it,” the boxes read. “This has a special nothing in it.”

Garnier settled down in 1990 to run his Out ‘N’ About Treehouse Resort in this counterculture outpost in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. But he’s had to reach deeply into his bag of tricks to stay in business. He now finds himself more than ever out on a limb.

Tired of hassling with Garnier, Josephine County is taking him to court, demanding that he tear down his treehouses unless he can show they are safe and a new one built last year doesn’t violate zoning laws. The trial begins July 2.

“I can’t see why they are wasting money on me when I’m doing good to the community,” Garnier says. “I’m the second-largest tourist attraction in the Illinois Valley, next to the Oregon Caves.”

Garnier’s treehouses may be more famous--in some circles, anyway--than the nearby marble caves, though the caves are a national monument.

Since gracing the cover of Peter Nelson’s “Treehouses, the Art and Craft of Living Out on a Limb” in 1994, Garnier has been featured in national publications and has made the rounds of TV talk shows.

Last year, he was in the Fodor guide, “Nights to Imagine, Magical Places to Stay in America,” by Peter Guttmann.

Guttmann says he knows of treehouses where people can stay in Hawaii and Maryland, but Garnier’s are his favorites.

Rather than rely on plans, Garnier designed his treehouses as he and his friends built them, injecting whatever came to mind.

A hand-carved peacock graces the door to the first one, which is 20 feet from the ground in some white oaks and has just enough room for a double bed, a small sink and a chamber pot inside.

The Swiss Family Complex is two treehouses--one for mom and dad and one for the kids--connected by a swinging bridge. The Treepee is a tepee in a tree and the Treeroom School House has a curved deck, sweeping staircase, twin roof peaks and a claw-footed bathtub with a view through an octagonal window.

Outside, horses graze in a pasture and dogs and cats roam in the shade of towering oak trees.

“The whole concept of a treehouse typifies childhood imagination and a sense of innocence and fantasy that is pretty much lost amongst lodgings in this country,” Guttmann said. “At night to be there on one of these swaying in the branches was just a very romantic magical sensation.

“So often in my own travels I see this kind of individuality being snuffed out by governmental big-brother forces. While not necessarily a fervent anti-government person, I think this is one of those examples where soulless gray bureaucrats do their utmost to stamp out individuality and creativity.”

All for promoting local tourism, Josephine County is just trying to make Garnier follow the rules like everybody else, says Fred Borngasser, chairman of the Board of Commissioners.

“What we feel we have an obligation to do in the county is follow the rules for the benefit of everybody in the community,” Borngasser says.

Garnier hasn’t exactly sweated the details when it comes to rules. He built his first treehouse without a building permit. Though supported by cables, wood beams, and angle irons bolted into the trees, it had no concrete foundation, and no way to show it could withstand an 80 mph wind.

In 1994, the county ordered Garnier to tear them down, but having just been featured on the cover of a book, he hated to let all that publicity go to waste.

Garnier piled 10,847 pounds of friends and neighbors into his original treehouse to show how sturdy it was.

“We had 66 people, two dogs, a cat and I’m not sure if the hummingbird alighted or not,” Garnier says proudly.

Garnier stopped charging guests, and instead made them pals on a sleepover, signing them up as Tree Musketeers by selling them Treeshirts for $75 to $125 a night.

To overcome the zoning problem, Garnier created the Out ‘N’ About Treehouse Institute and Treesort, arguing the law allows schools in a farm zone.

Claudia Millen of Palm Harbor, Fla., will miss the treehouses if they are destroyed. She visited with her husband and four children last year.

“I guarantee if I ask my children about it 10 years from now when they’re grown up, they will remember lots of things about it because they got to see their mother and dad swinging from a rope in a tree,” Millen says.

“They don’t normally get to see their parents act like children.”