Why I’m Dreaming of a Wild Christmas

Here’s our first Christmas tree in Dubois.

It’s anything but perfect: a bit lopsided and tippy, with lots of gaps between branches and not many of those in the first place. We had to run two guy-lines away from the trunk to keep it stable.

It’s so sparse because you’re not supposed to cut pine trees in the forest that are standing alone, which of course are the ones that are thick and symmetrical. This one was in a group of four, so what looked dense from a few feet away turned out to be the branches of all four trees, intertwined.

We paid the princely sum of $8 for the Forest Service permit, and then headed off toward the woods–stupidly leaving our snowshoes behind. “I’m hip-deep here!” I called out to my husband, after clambering over the bank left there by a snow plow. “I know!” he called out from close behind me.

We realized quickly that our chosen tree did not have all the branches we were seeing, but we were already too cold to change our minds. He sawed it off near the base, and then had to lug it back for about 30 feet through hip-deep snow.

For the first time in my decade here, I had a scintilla of understanding for the tie hacks who worked in these mountains all winter a century ago, felling and processing huge pines trees to make railroad ties. Not for the first time here, I pondered how easy we have it now.

Here’s the last tree we had in Brooklyn. It looks like a fashion model in comparison to the rangy, lanky specimen we have in Dubois. But it dropped needles like crazy. This year’s tree sucks it up from the tree stand like beer and holds on like a cowboy at the rodeo.

All those trees we bought in Brooklyn were dense and beautiful, farmed like carrots or potatoes and then trucked down to the city from somewhere in New England. Choosing one was just another shopping experience: You’d have the guy with the gloves rotate one after another until you found the one you liked best.

Every year for more than a decade, in a tradition started by my daughter as a child, I’d deliver hot chocolate or tea every evening to Luke and Anners from New Hampshire, who were selling the trees at the church up the block. We got to be good friends. Luke would always give me a break on the cost of the tree, which could get close to 3 figures retail, if it was tall.

When we got our less-than-perfect tree into the Wyoming house, snow was still falling from the branches and there was ice on the trunk. Of course we had to re-cut the trunk. I got on the other side of the saw, and pulled ineptly, holding onto the trunk as we sawed through about four inches of sticky, sappy wood.

I felt a bit ridiculous doing this in our warm living room, as I thought again of those valiant tie hacks. (Thanks to the Dubois Museum for the poster.)

A tie hack would fell a suitable tree without assistance, using a one-man crosscut saw, write Robert and Elizabeth Rosenberg in wyohistory.org, and then remove the limbs with a double-bitted ax. Finally, he’d hew it to the final dimensions with a seven-pound broadax. He would drag the finished tie to the logging road using a tool with a metal point on one end, and add it to a stack.

A good tie hack could do this 25 times in a day. Assuming an 8-hour day, that’s about 20 minutes to topple a huge tree, limb it, slice it up and drag it to the pile.

In my heated living room, I used my large pruning shears to “limb” our tree at the bottom, so I’d have greens to add to the ornaments on the mantel. I also nipped some extra branches from fallen pine trees near our house. The greens this year are free. In Brooklyn, the garland I used in my living room cost about $10 a foot.

As I said, my wreath in Brooklyn got a “free” bow from Anners, for the price of all that hot chocolate and tea. I did shell out a little last week in Dubois: I bought a few fancy bows and a pine-cone wreath from Sandy’s great pop-up shop downtown.

The house looks and smells wonderful inside, and there’s a winter wonderland outside. Since we put up and decorated the tree, I have seen through that back window behind it two moose, a rabbit, many deer, the usual cattle, and a lone wolf crying out to find a mate.

Have a very merry Christmas, or whatever you celebrate this time of year. Thanks so much for sharing my pleasures.

© Lois Wingerson, 2016
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Author: LivingDubois

I am a retired science journalist, devoted to enjoying and recording the many pleasures of life in the Wyoming's Upper Wind River Valley. View all posts by LivingDubois