Randi Pink’s Treehouse Village
by Kristi Houk
How did you keep yourself busy during the pandemic? Perhaps you taught yourself how to bake bread, renovated your bathroom, or took up gardening. Local author and entrepreneur, Randi Pink, had other ideas. Big ideas. In the throes of lockdown, Pink, a single mother of two, was strolling her children around The Birmingham Botanical Gardens and The Birmingham Zoo when the idea of creating a Treehouse Village in East Lake was born—
Randi Pink
How it started
“During the height of the pandemic in 2020, I would walk for hours, like, I walked holes into my shoes. Two places were accessible to us: the Birmingham Zoo and The Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Without them, I don’t know what we would have done, but they are right next to each other in the same zip code and I thought: there needs to be something else. I need a village, but I don’t necessarily need my village to be in the same place as The Zoo. Where else can my village be? I had no money and no thought of doing it and then about a year later, my book started to take off and I got a little bit of money, bought the land in April 2021 and I just took the leap to try to build the Treehouse Village.
But life hasn’t halted. I still have to drop the kids off, feed them, clothe them, and nurture them emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Deadlines still have to be met, sometimes at 3 am. Most days I operate on coffee and anxiety.”
Goals for the treehouse village
“My initial vision was four treehouses; all ADA-accessible.
M.A.P.S. Treehouse— would house maps that shaped Birmingham from red-lining maps to cave-dwelling maps and would also host a summer camp for kids to explore Birmingham.
Folk History Treehouse— A booth where local folks could tell their stories and have them archived.
Literary Treehouse —hosts books and a place for reading.
Archivist Dinners— A locally curated dinner table. Two hours of sitting around the table with community mappists, archivists, historians, and other people who know Birmingham folk history and archivist history and who can tell us how this city was shaped, where the cave dwellings are, and what used to exist. Like the castle that was torn down a few years ago —Why did that need to go? What happens to the bricks of the old Southtown Housing?”
Elders Treehouse— A cohort of 10 people per year to create a village for elders. Looking around at Birmingham during the height of the pandemic, children suffered the most, and a close second was the elderly population. They were just sitting on their porches, in rocking chairs, watching traffic go by with all the wisdom that they acquired in their decades here and I thought, that’s not ok. They carry historical knowledge in those brains. My mother drank from colored fountains. But there are people alive that have sharecropper experiences and stories. This was the first treehouse I conceptualized because we have to get them off their porches and get that wisdom out. Eventually, I would love the elders to interact with the teens. I am encouraged by this generation of teenagers especially because they want to learn from the elders. They have patience and interest. If you give them a table with the elders they will listen. But the table has to be built first.
Who would the treehouses serve?
“Single mothers, students, and the East Lake Community. The “one street at a time” initiative where kids on a particular street can play, etc. on the campus. An opportunity for children in the neighborhood to get to know each other. Access would be 2-hour blocks after school. The point is to have a safe, wholesome place that is approached creatively in the inner city, not on the outskirts.”
Why is a village important?
“It may feel like we’ve moved on from the pandemic but I feel like it is a missed opportunity to just forget it. The whole world shut down and now we just move on and forget about it? No. I want to focus on what I saw and what my friends saw in that moment.
We were lonely. And there was nobody to help. There was nowhere to go except the confines of our home. Where things fell apart and I’m not going to ignore that just because it feels like things are back to normal. That had reverberating effects on families, on mothers - (capital M) Mothers, and we’re still struggling. We need and deserve a village. The fragility of society and how we saw how fragile our foundation is so, God forbid, if that happens again, what are we gonna do? Go back home and go for 3-hour walks again? No. It has to be something else that rises out of that. I’m not going to stop until there is some type of village— even if it's just a circle of people in a coffee shop somewhere.”
I was so grateful for the opportunity to speak to Randi and learn about her vision for the Treehouse Village and I know I speak for all of us at Ruffner when I say that we look forward to collaborating with Randi on her mission to create a magical place for Birmingham’s Elders, adults, and children to learn, grow, and fellowship while breathing in the wild air of historic Ruffner Mountain Preserve.
Please consider donating to Randi’s fundraiser to help her vision become a reality.
