HELP quotes about trees in Great Works of Literature

[brightventures]

I now this is going to sound odd but here it goes. I NEED your HELP.

There is a design competition at one of our local art gallery/botanical gardens. We are to design and build a treehouse to represent one of literature's great works and provide a quote from the work of literature inspiring the treehouse. There will be visitors young and old interacting with the treehouse thruout the summer of 2012. The Treehouses will be associated with the literature themed summer.

Here is a link if you want more information: http://www.cheekwood.org/Gardens/Treehouses.aspx

What work do you think should be represented and what would the quote be?

[mal4mac]

William Shakespeare:

As You Like It

Act 2, Scene 5

SCENE V. The Forest.

Enter AMIENS, JAQUES, and others

SONG.

AMIENS

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Thomas Hardy stole Amiens' first line as the title for a novel, if you want to start making connections...

As you are looking for a full work then why not "As You Like it"? It's one of Shakespeare's greatest comedies and, more to the point, it is explicitly pastoral. It also has one of Shakespeare's greatest heroines - Rosalind flees persecution in her uncle's court, to find safety and eventually love in the Forest of Arden. maybe you can imagine the treehouse as Rosalind's hide out in the Forest of Arden?

It's full of quotable phrases - it has the "All the world's a stage" speech, and is the origin of the phrase "too much of a good thing".

Donovan recorded "Under the Greenwood tree":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t47O53ItHDk



You can gets the kids dancing and tai ji-ing to that!

[Ragnar Freund]

Gone.

[togre]

Here's a more general idea--What about ships? The construction of a boat/ship shaped tree-house would be relatively straightforward and you have ways of making the specific ship/literary work recognizable (the name and other features).


Or Swiss Family Robinson. They had at least one tree house, though in my memory I'm sure I'm conflating the Disney movie with book.