The freelance photographer and blogger has built his own treetop idyll complete with hot tub and skate park.
As a kid he dreamed of having a treehouse, now the former nomad has two. The cabins are perched between two huge Douglas firs and are connected by a narrow 25-foot rope bridge.
The amazing hilltop structure has stunning views across Washington’s Skamania County, where Huntington’s family has owned land for the last 20 years.
“I’ve been travelling for the last three years and I wanted to set up a home base. I really liked living in a small space, like in my camper, and a treehouse kind of seemed like a good evolution of it,” he said.
Huntington’s adventure started in 2011 when he quit what many would have considered a dream job designing for Ralph Lauren. He gave in to his wanderlust, bought a VW Synchro, left New York and went camping and surfing on the West Coast.
He continued his road trip in other countries, all the time documenting his adventures about the people he met. He coined #vanlife and wrote a book on mobile living called Home Is Where You Park It. But after travelling 100,000 miles, he decided he wanted a permanent base. He’d always loved treehouses, so he decided to build a grown up version where his friends could come and hang out.
Huntington chose a remote plot of land where he camped as a child, close to Portland, Oregon, on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. With the help of family and friends, it took a year to build his own slice of paradise, which he calls “Cinder Cone”.
The project cost $170,000 and includes two cabins, each about 220 square feet, one for himself and the other for guests, plus a studio, wood-fired hot tub and concrete skate bowl carved into the hillside. He documented the whole crazy process from start to finish and has written a book, which he funded through Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform to bring creative projects to life. By sharing his incredible creation, he hopes to inspire other people to leave the city and build their own little corner of paradise.
“People have these notions that you have to move into the city but you really don’t,” he said. “I have Wi-Fi here and full 4G internet. And that’s all I need to make a living, so I could be here or I could be in Manhattan and it’s way cheaper to do what I’m doing here.”
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