After a few non-stop years on the road searching for clean breaks and untouched powder A Restless Transplant photographer and adventurer (and friend of ACL) Foster Huntington finally hit the brakes. The Spring of this year saw his second photo book published – Home Is Where You Park It – and the summer brought him home to his family property in the Columbia River Gorge where he has begun constructing a life-long dream.

He and his group of friends have gathered on top of a long-dormant cinder cone in Skamania County, Washington to build a three-platformed treehouse connected by suspension bridges forty feet up in the air and a skatepark formed and poured into the top of the hillside. There’s a real community that has developed at the Cinder Cone – friends from around the country are camping for weeks, months at a time, sleeping in their trucks and in tents, pitching in to help realize Foster’s vision – an idea he’s had since he was a young boy growing up on the property. While a cynic might see a Tom Sawyer who has rallied his pals to help white wash a fence, something much bigger, much more substantial is happening.

Although they are being smart and thrifty about using some salvaged materials, this is no hack job. They’re not cobbling together a fort to last a few summers – arborists, treehouse architects, carpenters, cranes, tractors and cement trucks – the dream is big and it’s real. Foster is thinking long term – a retreat for when he and his Lost Boys grow weary from their home on the road.

Family meals, swimming holes, a wood-fired hot tub, an archery range, a family of weed wacking goats, a summer sunrise from 40 feet up – the story is told with Foster’s photos at The Cinder Cone. And like every other Foster Huntington project, be inspired by one simple question… “What if?” –AJ