A recollection of my finitude (part 2)

There is an attraction in Disneyworld´s Magic Kingdom very few people take any time to visit. It´s called the Swiss Family Treehouse, a steel and concrete-tree based on a 1960´s film, The Swiss Family Robinson. In the film, a Swiss family ends up stranded on a desert island after their ship is attacked by pirates and ends up building their home on a tree.

Compared to other rides in Magic Kingdom, the treehouse holds little allure nowadays. Visitors are invited to walk up and down stairs to "merely" contemplate the rooms and objects left behind by the family (a mother, father and three sons). What child or teenager of our age would exchange a roller coaster ride, or the many lights and sounds of the park, for a venue that looks more like a museum? The original treehouse, built in Disneyland in the 1960´s, already shut down for good in 2021. However, its Magic Kingdom counterpart, inaugurated on October 1st, 1971, still survives to this day amid more modern thrills.

In October this year, while at a Halloween party at the Magic Kingdom, I came upon this tree. For these kinds of parties, some attractions remain open, while others close. To my surprise, the Swiss Family treehouse was open, and not so surprisingly, there wasn´t a single soul in line. I decided to go in, partly to escape the crowds.

Inspecting those rooms at dusk was one of the most poignant moments in my life. I tried to imagine the many families that made their ways through those stairs over the last fifty years, when the treehouse might have been fun to visit.

I went there looking for solitude and came out thinking about finitude. Sometimes, artificial things may bring us back to some kind of truth.