Unruly Trees, All Lined Up

An abandoned filbert orchard provides a great way to explain a core tenet of No Vacation Required.

The other day we were telling a friend about how we’re writing the No Vacation Required book. Unable to provide the full framework we’ve developed to explain one of the central tenets of our No Vacation Required philosophy, I found myself sharing a childhood experience that felt like an apt metaphor.

A Fallow Orchard

Behind my childhood home, on the eastern edge of the Willamette Valley, was a fallow orchard. At some point in the past, neat rows of filbert trees (hazelnuts for non-Oregonions) had been cultivated. Later, the orchard was abandoned to make room for an unremarkable neighborhood of 1970’s tract homes.

So, long before I made it my “magical” hiding place, this orchard was a testament to human control over nature: a forest tamed. But when the orchard was abandoned, the land began to reclaim itself.

Mirror Lake and Mt. Hood, Oregon. Photo Credit: Us

Sitting in the dense woods – my respite from a small house, small town, and small thinking – I marveled at how nature could quietly un…