Ahhhhhh- the joy of finding the perfect Christmas tree.
This year Wes and I decided to pull a Christmas Vacation and go out and chop down our own tree. Living out here surrounded by national forest and reserves, finding an area to look for a tree was not a problem so about a week after Thanksgiving, Wes and I went and got our $10 tree permit and set out in search of our tree.
Before we set out on our excursion, I went through a semi-check list with Wes just to make sure he thought things through. This is when the comparisons between Wes and Clark Griswold came to the forefront. So to help others who are considering chopping down their own tree, I've come up with some helpful advice to make your trip go more smoothly than ours.
1)Invest or rent snow shoes. You will be walking in snow for a minimum of 1 hour in search of a tree so it helps if snow is not filling your shoes. My snow boots almost reach my knees but the more we ventured into the forest, the deeper the snow got and it wasn't long before the snow was almost mid thigh on me. Wes doesn't own a pair of snow boots yet so his dumb ass was marching through it in a pair of Carhartts and steel toe work boots. He is quite a bit taller than me so it didn't affect him the same.
2) Maybe the most important- Bring a motorized saw. I asked Wes before we left if he brought a saw and he assured me yes (I definitely didn't want a true Christmas Vacation moment). This is probably where I went wrong. When we pulled up to the national park and began to unload I asked about the saw and Wes handed my a hatchet. Seriously? Was he expecting me to go all Paul Bunyan on this tree? No, of course not- the hatchet was part of our bear defense 'just in case'.
2a)Bring bear spray- or a gun!
What you may ask was the method to disconnect the tree from the earth? When we finally decided on a tree Wes whipped out, from his pocket no less, a saw that was maybe six inches long.
Sydney:'That's what we're supposed to use to cut this thing down?'
Wes:'It's got a crazy sharp blade."
A good rule of thumb is, if it can fit in your pocket, you probably need something better. So in about 20-30 minutes with snow filled shoes, soaking wet pants, and multiple switch hitting we finally cut through the trunk of our frozen solid tree. 2b) If you are smart enough to bring a battery operated saw, make sure to bring multiple batteries since the cold tends to make batteries die faster.
3)Invest in a sled. Why you ask? If you think walking through three feet of fresh powder is hard- try dragging a 10+feet tree through it. If we had a sled, not only would we not get sap all over our gloves, but we could have put the tree on top of the sled and easily pulled in back the 1 1/2 miles back to the car. I know it was 1.3 miles because Wes' dad gave him a gps hiking tracker for his birthday and at least we were smart enough to use it as to not get lost from our car.
4)Go early. We took off at about 3:30 to go on this scavenger hunt and it was dark when we finally got the tree on the car. No matter how often you drive around and say 'That'd be the perfect Christmas tree', when you get out and actually look; you'll find something wrong with all of them. After a while you get tired and they all start to look the same so you settle.
5) Bring straps. Unless you have a very large truck bed, chances are you'll need something to tie the tree down to keep it from entering the highway on the way home. Luckily, we were smart enough to remember this rule before hand so no problems there. We even brought an old sheet to wrap the bottom of the tree to help prevent paint scratches and excessive sap off the roof of the car.6)Bring a tape measure. I asked Wes if he thought he needed on before we left and he said, 'No, I can just stand next to it and raise my arm to get an idea'. Classic Clark. After two days in the garage to de-thaw, I decided to get it ready to bring in. Before I did, I thankfully thought to measure it. In the home we're renting out here, the living room has 9 foot ceilings. When I measured the tree I quickly realized I needed to find 35 inches to take off (which I did so using a battery operated saw taking me no time; yes we had one the whole time) somewhere without ruining the look of the tree. So much for Wes' guesstimation skills. When you're surrounded by trees, all of them either look way too huge or super small. Charlie Brown would have had a hay day out there; I found plenty that looked like his tree.
After all the effort, our tree turned out to be more of a Christmas bush than a Christmas tree. Thankfully it didn't come with a squirrel, catch fire (yet), or break any windows when we set it up, but we did have to move around our furniture to try to get it to fit and we ended up cutting an addition 6 inches off after we got it inside. It turned out to be three trees connected to one trunk. Now the corner of our living room looks like we brought the forest home. The tree is not symmetrical so it was constantly leaning, in order to fix it we tied it off to the wall. It still leans forward a bit, but I no longer wake up in the middle of the night thinking I just heard it crash.
I hope these little tips will help some of you on your future venture out to the woods in hunt of your perfect Christmas Tree. I'm not sure if we'll do this again or not next year but at least we'll be more prepared for it if we do.
If it's gonna happen sometime...
Then why not now?
