Humboldt County Historical Society
Living With The Giants: A history of the arrival of some of the early Northwest
Coast settlers
by Evelyn McCormick
Evelyn McCormick, author of The Bluffs Around Us, focuses on both memories of her family and the North Coast community in this 1984 book. The 14 chapters include They Came By Land, And They Came by Sea, Memories of the Samoa Cookhouse, Humboldt-A Place That Doesn't Stand Still, Beaches of the Restless Pacific and several others. In Chapter 13, McCormick writes of a southern Humboldt man who converted a goosepen (an aged redwood tree or stump whose center died and disintegrated leaving a large hollow).
"Don McLellan arrived unannounced in late 1958 or early 1959. He
resided alone for about a year in a redwood goosepen... This particular tree, akin to many
others, is still alive producing new needles and cones from year to year.
"The inner circumference of the goosepen was large enough for
McLellan to house a wood stove, a few shelves and necessary utensils as well as
provisions. This ingenious hermit found that what his new home lacked in girth, it
furnished in height.
"He immediately went to work with redwood beams, constructing second and third stories above his kitchen. He fashioned a mattress of straw for his second floor bedroom and kept some of this belongings on the third floor. His stove was completed with a curved chimney which forced smoke through a wide crack and beyond the bark outdoors. His tree house was completely within the tree itself."
Read more about Don McLellan's adventures living in a tree and other interesting tales of early settlement in Humboldt County in Evelyn McCormick's Living With The Giants.