In December of 2000 Brandon and I decided to "chop down" our own Christmas tree. We thought it would be fun and might save us a little money since the permit was only ten dollars. We loaded up two year old Onion Ring and baby Buttermilk Sky along with some rope, gloves, and a hacksaw into our green Ford Tempo and headed for the hills--though we didn't know we were headed for the hills. We had never been to this part of Utah before and so we followed the directions given on the permit to the
Uintah National Forest, just south of an
itty-bitty town called Vernon. We began our journey in high spirits, expecting to arrive at mountains full of beautiful evergreens. However, as we continued on, we saw nothing but sagebrush and a few scraggly trees. The scraggly trees became thicker and the landscape more hilly and as we turned onto an unpaved, muddy road, we realized that these scraggly trees were the junipers and
pinyon pines that our permit specified we were allowed to take. Our optimism waned and disappointment ensued.
I found the following three photos on the
Internet and this is exactly what it was like except there was more snow and the roads were muddy.
I couldn't believe that anyone would want these trees for Christmas trees. The junipers were completely unacceptable to me for this purpose--they were scraggly beyond all reason and didn't even have needles.
The
pinyon pines were barely better. They did have needles, but they, too, were scraggly, round, squat, and branched widely. I thought they were ugly but after coming this far we figured we'd have to make do.
We began our search for the least offensive tree with Onion Ring and Buttermilk Sky in tow, tromping through the mud and snow. Brandon had been ready to just grab one and go, but I, with my hopes dashed for a gorgeous, slender, full evergreen kept searching, hoping to find something that might resemble my vision at least a tiny bit. We wandered through the hills, searching, for one, maybe two hours.
Finally, after all of this wandering plus possibly some heated words and all of us getting very grumpy, we settled on a tree and Brandon began to cut it down with his hacksaw. He didn't get far very fast because the hacksaw kept binding, the blades getting full of sap. He struggled for some time with the hacksaw, desperately pushing and twisting the tree until he shredded the trunk asunder.
It was after the tree was felled and we attempted to lift it, that we realized it was rather large. Perhaps only a little too tall for our needs, but the
pinyon pines had such a round shape that the circumference of the tree was very big. And it was heavy. And prickly and awkward. We tried to lift it, Brandon holding the base and me trying to lift it somewhere in the huge bushy upper branches. After several failed attempts, I felt utterly discouraged and said (with maybe a hint of whine in my voice), "I can't do this Brandon. It's too big. Maybe we should just find a smaller one."
Brandon looked at me. Now, imagine to yourself the cartoons where you've seen the cartoon character get mad and their feet start to fill with red which rises up their legs, up their body and into their head, their eyes getting red and steam coming out of their ears. This is what happened to Brandon. As soon as the steam started coming out of his ears, he uttered a guttural, crazed "
ROOAAAAAARRRR!!" and grabbing the tree by the trunk he heaved it's massive bulk onto his back and stomped through the snowy, slushy mud to the distant car.
Amazed and delighted, I laughed and whooped and hollered at him, half expecting his skin to turn green and huge muscles to rip through his clothes. It was a memorable moment.
"That was awesome, Brandon!" I said as he heaved the tree down next to the car.
It was then that we realized that the tree was so huge that getting it home was going to be quite a feat as well. But there was no turning back now, not after all we had been through. The tree was larger than the top of the car. But the top of the car was the only possibility so Brandon spent another considerable amount of time struggling to tie the tree onto our little Ford Tempo. Eventually he succeeded with branches hanging over either side and down the back of the car, but it appeared to be secured.
Oh, what a wonderful thought it was that we might soon be home! Brandon started the car and pushed the gas and the wheels started to spin in the mud. The sun had sufficiently softened the mud during the time we had been there so that our car was now getting no traction. Brandon pushed the gas and we held our breath as the car inched forward, sliding this way and that. After spinning our tires, slipping and sliding, we miraculously made our way down the muddy road and out of those stubby, scrubby hills. We heaved relieved sighs and laughed over our funny (in retrospect) adventures, thinking they were over.
Well, I guess we can consider ourselves lucky that
some bad things didn't happen to us--none of us broke our legs, none of the kids got lost in the woods, and the tree never fell off of the car and we made it home safely.
Once home Brandon hauled the tree into our 900 square foot apartment and we then realized exactly how much too big it was. Standing in our living room with one side against the wall it extended halfway into the room. We discovered that our Christmas tree stand was not large enough to balance out the bulky weight of the tree and the tree kept toppling over in the stand. Brandon partially shaved the branches off of one side to put against the wall so that we might still be able to walk through our living room. To solve the toppling problem, Brandon ingeniously wrapped piece of string around the upper trunk of the tree and tried tacking it to the wall on either side. It didn't work.
We sat, defeated, with our
enormous, ugly tree, lying all over the living room floor. We considered throwing the whole thing away and buying a Christmas tree from a lot. Or not having a Christmas tree at all.
We ended up cutting the top third of the tree off, putting it into our Christmas tree stand and setting it on top of our round coffee table. It worked. It was the ugliest Christmas tree I'd ever seen, but it worked.
Well, you'd think that after this experience we would have learned the following:
a. You don't go chopping down your own Christmas tree unless you have a truck.
b. You take a chain saw.
c. You take a tape measure having
pre-measured your space.
d. You research the areas in which the permits are available to be sure that you get a permit in an area where there are trees that you like.
e. Be sure that your
marriage is strong.
I guess we felt that this had been such a cool, fun time that we decided to do it again the next year.
Then we learned the above lessons. But that is a story for another day.
The end.
