I love the idea of an old-fashioned Christmas tree hunt: bundling up in warm woolens, tromping through snowy woods with a sled and an ax, finding the perfect tree, cutting it down and pulling it home. Sounds like the sort of romantic, glowing scene that Norman Rockwell might have painted, doesn’t it?
For the past three years, a few of our (younger, more fit) friends have bundled up in their Polartec, driven a Flexcar up into the Snoqualmie National Forest, snowshoed through the forest to find the perfect trees, cut them down, and driven them home. That’s a romantic Christmas tree hunt, Gen-X style.
While Paul and I are romantics, we’re not the high forest snowshoeing types. Since one of the advantages of cutting one’s own tree is a really fresh tree, I contemplated getting our tree from one of the many U-Cut tree farms within an hour’s drive of here. However, the notion of wandering, along with any number of other families, through rows of carefully planted trees to find and cut our tree struck me as being rather like hunting an exotic animal at one of those wild game ranches where one is guaranteed a kill. In other words, not my idea of romantic.
So this afternoon, Paul and I bundled up in coats, hats and gloves, and drove the Saab five blocks to the Queen Anne Helpline’s tree lot. We found the perfect tree, a 6 1/2′ Grand fir. One of the guys at the lot made a fresh cut on the tree’s trunk, and loaded it into our car. We drove it home.
The tree is now standing in the corner of our living room. It’s lushly conical, with a green resiny scent that fills the room. The cats think it’s lovely, too, or great smelling, or perhaps just something they’d like to climb.
The romance will come tomorrow evening, when we’ll light a fire in the fireplace, put on some Christmas music, trim the tree with lights and ornaments, then sit together in the dark and enjoy the glow.
To open the Advent calendar window for Day 9, click here:
This ornament, a gift from my aunt and uncle, is more glittery than most of our others, and much more fragile. Its time on the tree was limited to what was required for this photograph; for the rest of the season, it will be part of our mantel decorations.
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I had to laugh both about the ornament’s provenance and its limited time on the tree. I am now probably the only person in Texas who does not have a glittery glass bauble on my tree and continue to take perverse pleasure in that. One of these days two little boys will probably ask me why we don’t have any shiny glass ornaments- and they will probably then respond “Babee, you are so silly.” So be it. Love you