Tree hunting in California, where I grew up, used to be an all day adventure. It had to be—it took forever to get to a tree farm from where we lived in the Bay Area. We’d spend all day in the Santa Cruz mountains, or early on—when we had just moved up to Washington—we’d climb up the side of a mountain with a forestry license and an ax to get the best tree.
In recent years, we’ve spent maybe an hour or less getting a tree. This year, we wanted to take the tradition back a bit: give the day its space to make memories again, not just pick up a tree like a bit of groceries. That’s wonderful for so many people—I’m not knocking it—but for our family the thrill of the (tree) hunt has not only been a search for an aesthetic but for new memories to make, to anchor us together through the rest of the year.
This is a month long goal of ours during this season: building tethers to each other that will hold strong no matter what the next year brings. We often need those tethers; whether we’re straining them ourselves or the year we’re having frays the connection: whenever we’ve taken the time to create more of these memory bonds during this time of year—as old ties inevitably fade with time, trials, and the pull of other commitments,—we’ve felt the benefit of them.
So we took the day to find trees far from home. Our hunt took us up to Leavenworth (a tiny Christmas town in the north Cascades), through a snow storm in Cle Elum and Blewett Pass, and then after a good lunch in faux Bavaria (and after a guy in Grinch costume pretended to steal Mom and Dad’s dog Chester because she looks like his cartoon henchpup), we ended up back nearer to home.
At the foot of Mount Si, we found an amazing tree farm that’s been run by the same family since ‘46. Horses were running alongside rows of trees glowing in the early sunset. We found a couple of beauties amongst the acres of trees as we raced the remaining slices of light that were sifting through the storm clouds overhead. If Charlie Brown’s Linus has a thing for sincere pumpkin patches, I’ve got a thing for sincere Christmas tree farms.
#SalcedoSnowTree (x2) achieved, along with memories, aches, and exhaustion—just like I remember it growing up. Definitely worth the long day.