Peter Bahouth, the former executive director of the Turner Foundation, and now the executive director of the U.S. Climate Action Network, has helped preserve some of the most beautiful places on earth. But there’s no place he’d rather be than in his “tree house” perched high atop a couple of tulip poplars and an old Southern shortleaf pine.

“It was one of those ideas that came from being a kid and having a tree house that was just a board and a branch and having thoughts that if you had more than a five-dollar allowance you’d build the biggest tree fort imaginable,” Bahouth says. As an adult, he brought that daydream to life after buying a vacant wooded lot (complete with a meandering creek) next to his modern glass house. “I wanted it to be in spirit with the house—they both blur the line between personal space and natural space,” he recalls.

The whole thing took six months to plan and six weeks to construct, mostly out of spare lumber and old windows that had been thrown away or bought at antique stores. The result (which features a platform bed overlooking the creek and a whimsical bridge held in place with ship rope) is the perfect place for long naps and big parties.

At the end of the day, though, it’s all about getting up there to catch the sunsets, because, as Bahouth says, “when the sun goes down and filters through the trees, it’s pretty tremendous.”