The hunt this time was hard and long. And because there had been a pretty significant snowfall about a week before, the roads up the mountains were muddy and goupy and sticky and slick. It was a little bit treacherous from time to time.
Our good old Land Rover had been out of commission for a long time, but Kris bartered an ortho case with a dad who fixes cars, and after a looooong time the car came back to us, pretty functional (just a few stalls from time to time that scared me), and the perfect car for this kind of crazy activity.
We went up higher and higher without seeing many good candidates for our tree. All the trees had such scraggly bottoms, or had grown up so closely with another tree that taking one from the other would leave you only with half. When we came across an big old dead tree blocking the road I was discouraged, but Kris took matters into his own hands and busted the thing up and got it out of the way.
We finally found ourselves in a big open field at the end of some small dirt road. It sure seemed like there had to be something out there in the woods surrounding the field. I went for a walk and just still couldn't find much.
It was frustrating. Finally, after searching hard and long Kris saw a lone pine mixed up in a stand of something else. It was a big one and it was really hard to see how full it was because of how it was mixed up with other stuff. But Kris was convinced the tree would work once it was out, so we went for it. We let the boys and dog out of the car to explore and Kris got to work.
Kris finally broke down this year and bought a chain saw, but this tree was cut down with the good old fashioned hacksaw with a little saws-all action thrown in.
The boys had a set of walkie-talkies that Kris bought for skiing, and they were having a blast blabbing to each other and making different paging sounds.
And of course they were enjoying getting just a little too far away for my comfort.
I wish Kris wasn't so out of focus in the above picture, but oh well. He was enjoying his manly role of lumberjack and four wheel drive expert.
Above is original tree, straight after it was cut down. Below is the revised version after a little trimming of the bottom. After we got home we did some top trimming too--maybe a foot or even two off the top really brought the shape together nicely.
A much better shape if you ask me.
Tying the tree on the car always seems to be the toughest thing and take the longest, but maybe that's just because at that point everybody is always cold and hungry. The boys eventually got tired of exploring and climbed back in the Rover, looking forward to our eventual lunch.
We were all set and ready to go, and the drive down the mountain didn't take terribly long even though the roads had melted and gotten even more goupy during our search. We had to blast through a couple of pretty deep rutted puddles that made me very nervous.
On the way home we bucked tradtion and didn't stop at the ghetto Pecos Dairy Queen for lunch. Max was pretty bummed, but Harry's Roadhouse tasted a whole lot better and was much closer to our new house!
It was a good day, and we even got the lights on the tree on sunday. Gotta move quickly when the Christmas season is so short!
I'm glad we have some fun traditions, even if they do bump you around a little more than is to my taste. That's what I get for being the only girl in a family of crazy boys I guess!
3 comments:
Quite the bold expedition. I always enjoy your narrative. Makes me feel sorry for the less than luxurious Dairy Queen.
Quite the bold expedition. I always enjoy your narrative. Makes me feel sorry for the less than luxurious Dairy Queen.
Beautiful up there. And it must have smelled incredible. I'd have been terrified to let the dog go - but Sully, he's dependable. Mine would have disappeared and we'd have been on the mountain for years, looking for them. We only cut down a tree once, and that was when I didn't know the diff between fir and spruce. Nearly punctured myself to death getting that one lighted. And that was when I was pregnant with you, actually. Lovely tradition, scary and all.
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