O Christmas Tree

Though I am not a Christian, I am not an unChristian, either. I don't consider myself opposed to any philosophy or system of belief that promotes values of freedom, harmony, compassion and love. Done right, Christianity certainly can be these things. Still, I find it a bit odd in myself that I so thoroughly embrace Christmas. Sometimes I find myself singing along to a carol, the sentiment of which is not one I share, but lustily singing along anyway. All of which is a way of introducing the fact that one of the things I love most about Christmas is the traditional tree.

My grandfather Vern was 91 when he died. He was a man who was of the opinion that, while some rules were necessary, others were merely inconvenient; he felt free to ignore those that fell into the latter category. Thus it was that on one trip to visit him a few years before he died, he dug up, on National Forest land, a hemlock seedling that he believed would never survive in the shadow of its progenitor, which towered above it and placed the little tree entirely in its shade. He offered this little proto-tree to us. Not knowing what else to do, we took it home and planted it in a wooden pot outside, thinking, if it survived, we might be able to make use of it as a living Christmas tree, perhaps for many years in a row. We placed it in the shade of the big holly in our back yard for protection.

Vern's hemlock growing under our holly

Years went by. I watered the tree as often as it seemed to need it, but otherwise more or less ignored it. Being as it was in a wooden pot directly on the ground, eventually the bottom rotted out and the hemlock planted itself under the holly. Now it became a dilemma. We really didn't want a big tree in our back yard--or anywhere else in our yard, for that matter. We live on a fairly small urban lot and did not relish the idea of a giant hemlock taking up so much space, aside from the possibility of a windstorm bringing it down on the roof. But because it was Vern's tree, we really didn't want to just destroy it. Since it was in the shade of the holly, it grew very slowly, but as the years went by it became clear that it was only a matter of time before it broke through the cover and really took off.

So, this year we decided to bite the bullet and cut the tree down to use as our Christmas tree. Having had several years to think about it, I was no longer very sad at the prospect of destroying Vern's tree. Instead, I had come to think of it as a way of honoring him.

We first trimmed the branches back a bit. They had grown horizontally to compensate for the lack of sun, so would never have fit in our living room. Then we set about the job of cutting it down. I first had to cut away the old wooden pot, which was not too difficult, of course, it having long ago rotted. Then we got down to business, using a pruning saw. Not very efficient. Soon, our wonderful neighbor, Dave took pity on us and brought over a power tool called a Sawzall. After

Kathy with the pruning saw

Reid the maniac cuts down a tree!

switching out the batteries once, he got the job done.
According to the rings on the stump, Vern's hemlock was 16 years old.

Dave using the correct tool!

Kathy with the big guy

We then dragged it into the house, leaving a wake of destruction behind us. It seemed like such a small tree out there, but inside it turned out to be bigger than we thought! (Note the yard waste bin for further trimmings). After we whipped it into shape we put on some lights. Then, when our son and his wife came to visit for Christmas, we trimmed the tree and voila! our beautiful tree. Thank you, Vern!