This Fantastical Spiral Treetop Walk Actually Exists
A remarkable treetop walk among the trees has just opened in an adventure park in Denmark.
The idea was simple: allow people to really see the forest for the trees. Providing a bird’s – or bug’s – eye view, Camp Adventure in the Gisselfeld Klosters Forest, an hour south of Copenhagen, has just unveiled a remarkable observation tower. The enormous hourglass-shaped structure sprouts skyward from the forest floor, its wooden walkway spiralling 45 metres in the air.
The tower is the culmination of a 900-metre elevated boardwalk that winds through the wetlands, rolling hills, streams and meadows of this historic glacial woodland. The experience will change with the seasons as migrating birdlife and the ever-shifting landscape alter around it.
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It was designed by Copenhagen-based architects EFFEKT to blend in with its surrounds, constructed from weathered steel and locally sourced oak. But will the trees notice this interloper in their midst? Trees talk, you know…
According to German forester Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees, the forest is full of murmurs, though you may not be able to hear them. It’s the WWW, the Wood Wide Web, an underground fungal network, and it’s as full of drama and intrigue as an episode of Game of Thrones. That oak could be plotting its rival’s demise. That conifer might be squirrelling away food for their offspring’s future. Those two beeches might be best mates, sharing sunlight and weaving their root systems around one another.
Trees are a community, not a collection of anti-social loners competing for resources but an evolved, interdependent society where a tree may send warning about an insect attack to others who then alter their behaviour in self-defense. And you can watch the whole soap opera – from understory to the canopy, and everything in between.
