Swimming Upstream: We Drive On

We Drive On

It must be Christmas time again. Charlie, my next door neighbor, screwed his tree together and hung out the electronic door wreath. Mrs. K decorated her bushes with a kaleidoscope of colorful lights and flanked her doorway with the big Santa and the big snowman. Down the street, the concrete driveway people have gone a bit bezerk with their holiday light decorations, covering every twig and roofline edge. Over on the main drag, both sides of the road are illuminated with enough lights to make Las Vegas look dim. It was time for my family to get in gear.

Charlie's House

A neighbor's house

Another neighbor's house

Normally, my family puts off the advent of Christmas for at least a week or two longer, but there is no denying it this year. With stores taking down Christmas decorations in favor of Valentine’s Day and with a full social calendar for the next few weeks, we decided that we really needed to get our family tree before we simply ran out of days. So today, Sunday December 3, we went off in search of a Christmas tree, much earlier than ever before.

Some families simply go into a closet and pull out an artificial tree and screw it together. Others head over to the neighborhood Christmas tree lot to select their beauty. We, however, have always been a bit more adventuresome. Each year we head out into the wild and hunt down our tree, bag it, and bring the trophy home for display.

Up until a few years ago, our hunts were easy. All we had to do was head over to a small tree farm near my parents’ house and search for our white pine. Then once we’d bagged it, we’d head over to my parents’ house and show off our prize. That old farm was sold to a developer a few years back and all of the trees were bull-dozed. This left us to find a new place to catch a tree. That has not been easy.

One year, we discovered a small place in town that advertised itself as being “…the only cut your own tree farm in the city.” We found a couple of decent trees there, but there’s not much thrill in hunting down a tree that sits comfortably next to a busy city road. A couple of years ago, we found a remote farm about 30 miles out of town. It had about 50 semi-managed trees rooted on a hillside. For two years, we hunted trees there and the trees we ended up getting there were a bit deformed, but held a unique character. The selection there was a bit too thin; we were afraid that they wouldn’t have any trees left anymore. So we were determined to find a new location this year.

With our schedules cramped, we decided that today would be the day to capture our new tree. To start off, we decided to visit our town’s cut your own farm and see what they had to offer this year. Wandering around there, we found a section that we had missed in years’ past. However, after looking at the stock, no tree there seemed to scream, “I belong to you!” So we moved on to Plan B.

Plan B involved driving across the valley to the southern mountain wall. Then we planned on driving up and out of the valley, searching for cut-your-own farms. We passed by a small sign next to one side road, but that sign looked too simple and plain, not the kind of sign from a place that might harbor a tree that we might want to capture. So we rolled on.

Up the mountain we went. The view of the valley opened below us, and it was absolutely stunning. You could actually see forever. I saw an iceberg way off to the north and the dark void of space and time beyond. Since I was driving the family mini-van, I really couldn’t stop and gaze at infinity for more than a brief second.

Soon the road crested the mountain, and we found ourselves rolling along a two-lane highway across a high plateau in a strange marshy, deciduous world. We passed by a lonely elementary school where sometime last year the PE teacher was attacked by a deer as she was herding her fourth graders inside to escape the rampaging doe. Just a few miles later, we passed by a small white cottage-styled house with a gravel drive. There, striking the traditional driveway statue pose, stoically stood a live deer snorting frozen air. At first, my wife and I both thought that the creature was one of those concrete pottery deer that wives of old hunters buy. Then we thought it must be one of the Disney-like animated creatures people put out at Christmas time. Luckily, it stayed frozen long enough for our Caravan to pass safely.

All along our drive through this beautiful plateau, I was transported in time back to my youth when my father and mother took my brothers and sister to the farm of one of his co-workers. This man, Curtis, groomed Christmas trees and allowed us to come up and select any tree of our choice for free. I loved that place, a white farmhouse beside the rustic highway right in the little post office stop of Copper Hill, VA. As we neared Copper Hill, I told my wife and my i-Pod daughter that story from my youth. I just knew that Curtis must have passed this tree farm on to his boys, and it would be loaded with lovely trees ready for cutting. As we rounded the corner into Copper Hill, I immediately spotted Curtis’ old house, except it seemed rather tired and the tree field was just a field with no trees. We drove on.

Finally after two hours of searching, we found a place to look for our tree. Reynold’s Christmas Tree Farm. Pulling up the gravel drive, we were greeted by a large, lonely attendant sporting a VT sweatshirt, wearing brown overalls, and smoking a Dutch Master Honey Sport Cigarrillo. We were the only customers amidst a sea of finely pruned holiday trees. The white pines were groomed like Labrador retrievers with shiny shampooed coats. The Norway Goose Spruces were delicately molded into pristine poodle shapes. After sizing us up with a puff or two, the attendant gave us the basic price structure. Yellow tags→ $40…blue tags→$35. So grabbing a saw, we went off to confidently find our tree.

We found one tree. It was pretty. It was nice. We almost started cutting it. Then we all looked at each other a realized that the tree was talking to us. It was not being imprinted onto us. It dawned on us that this was not our tree and this was not our tree place. So we returned the saw to the attendant who was now busy with many, many mini-van families from the valley. He would not be hurting for business on this day. We drove on.

A few more miles down the road, we were just about to give up hope of finding a tree when we spotted a sign pointing to a narrow road off to the right. We decided to give it a shot, after all the sign said the place was only 1.25 miles down the road and the trees were advertised at only $10. True to the word, the tree place rolled in to view at exactly 1.25 miles. This was definitely a “pop” operation. Out front of the large modern house beside the road was an older man playing fetch with his dog. Flanking his wooded home were two fields of very young $10 trees. There was one couple with their two young kids in tow looking bewildered at deciding among the tiny choices. We turned around and drove on.

Actually, we pretty much put aside the notion that we would find a tree today as we left the $10 farm. Heading back to town, we decided that we would stop by the first place we saw a sign for and ignored with the plain and simple sign. We weren’t holding out much hope that we would actually find a tree though.

The place didn’t seem any more promising when we turned off the road and headed down a remote lane for several miles twisting and turning. Then the land opened up into a lovely little valley with nothing but Christmas trees lining the right side of the road. Apparently, there were two farms side by side. We chose the second. It was a farm with a house beside the road but a driveway a few hundred feet beyond. So we drove up that long hillside driveway to a ranch house way up the side of the small mountain with an old pickup truck parked in front. On the truck were one saw and a sign that had hurriedly been scrawled on white poster board, “Help yourself to any tree. $20. Put the money in the truck.” No one was in sight. So after dealing with disappointment for the better part of three and half hours and with my bladder operating in the red zone, we decided that we had nothing to lose. In fact, my wife felt that at least I’d be able to sneak off to relieve myself somewhere in the woods.

Moments after we entered the tree field behind the house, we knew that this place was different. There were hundreds of trees spreading down the hillside to the road below. What we immediately liked best about them was that they weren’t perfect. They looked like they all belonged on that hillside, and they were all talking to us. “Take Me!” “Take Me!” “I want to be your tree!” All of the trees were screaming at us at once, battling for our attention. It was a little baffling after striking out in so many places. What tree would be for us? There were so many to examine. I filtered away from the group and took care of personal business. When I emerged from hiding, my wife motioned me to a tree down near the bottom of the hill by the old house and the main road. So it was quite a trek down the hill and would be even more of a trek back up with our trophy tree. As soon as she showed the tree to me, I knew and heard that this was the tree for me. It seemed a bit big, but not too big. It had a pleasing shape but with a few interesting personality gaps and quirks. My daughter, though chilled and wanting to get this over with, agreed. This would be our Christmas tree!

Excited and full of energy, we formulated our capture plan. My daughter and I would stay by the tree, and I would use the saw on it. My wife climbed the mountain back to the house to give the truck its $20. Then she was going to bring the van back down to the old house where we could load up the tree. We had seen another couple doing this, and I asked them if it was ok if we loaded there, too. The man said that the property all belonged to Dr. So-and-so who ran the tree farm-so it would be all right.

It took me a long time to saw through the bottom of that tree. Its base was surprisingly thick, but I wasn’t concerned that the tree was too tall. I was fully aware of the basic illusion that some trees present to hunters. They make themselves look very small in the field, but they end up being very large in the house. I think that’s a tree defense mechanism. Our tree certainly looked the right height. So what if the trunk was a bit thick. It took me the better part of ten minutes to saw through that trunk with that dull blade. By that time, my wife had brought the car down after paying the truck. She helped push the tree off its stump on that final stroke. Finally, we had captured our prize. Now all we had to do was load it and take it home. That proved to be a bit problematic.

It seemed that this tree was built like a defensive lineman. It was thick and extremely heavy! It took all of my energy to simple drag it over to the van. Then my wife and I had to dead-lift it onto the roof rack. While most real modern farms have special tree bailing machines to tidy your tree up into a cute and convenient package, this farm had no such luxury. So I proceeded to tie it down as best as I could, first with bungee cords then with nylon rope reinforcements.

The trip home was slow, satisfying, and a bit anti-climatic. But in the end, we had accomplished our mission: to capture our trophy tree. Once home, we dragged the tree in to our garage and have let it rest there soaking in a huge bucket of water until we can prep it for the final decoration. Of course, it’s way too big for our living room. Standing at about 9 feet tall, it would dwarf our room unless I trim it a bit.

Our tree. The white freezer on the left is exactly five feet tall. Our tree is just a wee bit taller than that :)

As I reflect back on the day, I struck by several thoughts. I really don’t know understand why getting a Christmas tree is such a big deal to me. Yet, getting a tree is one of those time-honored traditions. Hunting that tree with my family is something I cherish. The script is usually the same, although rarely as protracted as this year’s hunt. Find a place; look for the “perfect” tree. Find it. Feel joy. Cut it down and bring it home.

While the script is the same, I find that I can remember almost every hunt vividly. Grabbing trees from a remote farm in Botetourt County, visiting Curtis’ farm, cutting trees as a newlywed with my bride at my sister’s house, all the years spent getting trees from our good friends, the Lumadue’s. I cherish each memory. From the time I spent with my parents hunting for trees to the times I spent with my young children getting candy canes, coloring books, and beautiful trees. Today I added a new chapter to that memory book with my almost grown up daughter and wife. It’s about more than trees. It reaches into something much deeper, much more soulful. We drive on.