The Wayfaring Chronicles: Getting an Alaskan Christmas Tree

It's our first holiday season in Alaska. With multiple feet of snow already on the ground, I start thinking about how to get my Christmas tree. I get a christmas tree every year. I love the way they smell and I think they look so pretty with christmas lights. Being from Oregon, we would go to the christmas tree farm and cut down our tree every year. When I moved to California for college, I didn't cut down a tree but my roomies and I would always get a fresh tree from a store. When Mat & I moved back to Oregon, I went back to cutting our own (well, Mat would cut it down for me). When we bought our house with a two-story living room, Mat would indulge me and let me get giant 12-15ft trees!

Well now we're in Alaska and I need to find out where I can get my tree. I ask around at work and find out that there are no tree farms here (makes sense actually, since it would take many, many years to grow a good sized tree up here in the subarctic) and the few places that do offer pre-cut fresh trees charge $100 for a 6 ft tree or $150 for an 8 ft tree! No wonder everyone here gets an artificial tree!

Doing some research, we found that cutting down your own christmas tree is allowed, free of charge, in certain areas of local national forests. So that's what we decided to do. It snowed a couple of feet recently so we figured the national forest road won't be accessible by car; we should bring our backcountry x-country skis. But the real kicker: we have been working a very sporadic schedule on nights for the last month, thanks to Mat's training as Charge RN for the ER. With no kids or family around, there has been no incentive to switch back to day schedule on our days off. We've been on the night schedule for a month straight. So we decided we'll be getting our christmas tree in the middle of the night.

We found the allowed area (Moose Range north of Palmer) and headed out at midnight. We drove out Buffalo Mine Rd, luckily the road had been plowed rather recently but there was still 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground and quite a bit falling too. We drove out past the neighborhoods and went as far as we felt comfortable pushing the Ridgeline. We found a place to turn around and park, then set off on our skis with the dogs. It was easy going up the road and surprising light enough to see close enough around us. We had our high-powered headlamps with us for searching out our tree. We skied in a couple miles before spotting a very nice looking symmetrical tree sitting on it's own. Mat ventured out into the thigh deep powder to inspect it and cut it down. Meanwhile Barley started running up and down the road barking at something. Mat said he saw fresh moose tracks and dung next to the tree so we think Barley was hunting moose.

Mat dragged it back to the road for me to inspect. It was a lot smaller than it had looked from the road but it was lovely and we worked damn hard to get it! Mat strapped it onto his backpack and we skied back to the car by 0200. Spent the rest of the early morning decorating my new tree!