It’s a Sunday morning and I’m driving by the river and through the woods to chop down my very own Christmas tree. It is a blue sky day, sunny and crisp. The pandemic is raging, but in this moment, I'm intentionally not checking the news or Twitter. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is playing on the stereo. My husband and I are wrapped in layers of red flannel, cable knit sweaters and puffy jackets. The Santa hat on my dog’s head is barely hanging on.
We are channeling our pandemic angst into Christmas spirit and heading into the woods, where social distancing is easy, to cut down our own tree.
I’ve never cut down my own Christmas tree before, but this year, when the Forest Service released its permits to chop-it-yourself, I figured, why not? It's actually good for the environment. Last year, we spent $100 on our tree and it barely stayed alive until Christmas morning. The Christmas tree permit cost $10 and I figured it’d be DIY, locally grown, wild and fresh. Not only that, but cutting down your own Christmas tree is a way to support the causes of wildfire prevention and healthy forests.
One of the reasons why I’ve never cut down my own tree is a subconscious one. Since I was a small child, I have known that we are Not Supposed To Cut Down Trees. That’s like suffocating the earth’s lungs! Rainforests from the Amazon to the Tongass are threatened by clear-cut logging and wildfires. Trees capture carbon from the atmosphere, and if enough trees are planted, they will save us from climate change. Planting a tree, after all, is synonymous with Earth Day. So why would I chop down a tree a few months earlier for Christmas?
But then, I was walking through the woods with a group of foresters and botanists who are running a legacy program on Tahoe’s West Shore to prescribe fire in state parks. I learned that many forests in the Sierra Nevada are overgrown with small trees — the same ones that we like to put in our living rooms for the holidays. Those small trees not only pose a significant risk for wildfire, but they also create an ecological problem that’s impacting the health of the forest.
Smaller, younger trees create competition for the larger, older trees in a forest. And the giants are valuable. They are centuries old — an age that’s incredibly rare in Tahoe. In the mid-1800s, almost the entire Tahoe Basin was clear-cut. Not only are these big, old growth trees important alive, but they also create important habitat when they die. Large, dead snags are refuges for many creatures and birds.
In Tahoe's forests, the larger trees are fewer in number than they were historically, in particular sugar, Jeffrey, ponderosa and whitebark pines. Those trees need sunlight to regenerate, which is hard to come by in a forest canopy as dense and overgrown as Tahoe’s is now. Small, younger firs, however, proliferate in the shade. And when they grow near those bigger trees, they make it harder for the more valuable and older trees to survive disease or drought, and also wildfire.
These small trees are ladder fuels. In a wildfire, they are responsible for carrying ground fire up and up to higher branches in the forest, and eventually the fire climbs to the crown. When a wildfire becomes a crown fire, it often accelerates, becomes more intense and harder to contain. As I followed the foresters through a plot of land that has recently seen a prescribed fire, they told me that one of the first steps to prepare is to gather the undergrowth and cut down small trees. Often, the woody debris will be assembled into piles and left to cure, or dry out, so that they’ll burn more efficiently when crews return later.
So, the small firs must go. And that’s why I’m here with a saw in my hand, searching for the perfect fir to be my Christmas tree.
Firs make great Christmas trees. They have a natural cross-section at the top that looks like a star. Their boughs are widely spaced for ornaments to hang. The silvery bark is smooth. When I was a kid, my family always preferred the “fuller” looking trees, and we’d usually buy one in the parking lot of a Save Mart or Safeway. In more recent years, overcome by a spur-of-the-moment Christmas spirit, I’ve made a quick turn into a dirt lot near a busy intersection and picked one out from the rows. For most of the year, these lots are usually bare strips of dirt that I hardly give a second thought to, but for a few weeks in December, with some hand-painted signs, lights strung, and a cashier in a trailer, they sell Christmas spirit.
In 2019, Americans purchased 26.2 million Christmas trees, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. The median price was $76.87, a figure that’s climbed because farmers are planting fewer seedlings. Christmas trees take about 7 to 10 years to grow, on average. In the 2017 Census of Agriculture, there were almost 300,000 acres in production for growing Christmas trees. Deep down, walking through those dirt lots and buying a tree at a busy intersection did feel somewhat superficial — especially when I live in the Sierra Nevada and there are gazillions of trees growing in the forest.
So I bought my permit from the Forest Service, and, this is important, because it is illegal to chop down a tree without a permit. I purchased my permit for the Tahoe National Forest, but other forests in the Sierra sell them, too. It cost $10 per tree plus a processing fee, and I bought two permits so my sister and her family could have one, too. When you buy the permit, the Forest Service also gives you a map and instructions. There are specific areas that Forest Service designates for tree cutting.
We pull off the road and park in a muddy lot. If I had put my snow tires on my car by now, we probably would have driven a bit further on the Forest Service road. But it is nice out and a walk feels good. It hasn’t snowed in a while, so the scene is a far cry from the winter wonderland I’d hoped for. Instead, I’m tromping through mud and slipping on blue ice. My husband packed our tools: tarp. Saw. Gloves. Measuring tape.
The measuring tape is essential. The Forest Service has maximum dimensions to steer you toward the trees that need cutting — the trunk must be smaller than a 6-inch diameter. Trees also look smaller in the forest than they do in your living room. The Forest Service recommends measuring the space inside your house before you head out, so you know you’re getting the right tree. We eyeballed it, but we should have followed the Forest Service’s advice. Our tree is much bigger than we thought it would be. Still fits though!
Eventually, we meander off the beaten road and onto a path less traveled that took us to a shady grove.
Honestly, it’s harder to pick a Christmas tree in a forest than in a parking lot. Every tree looks a little bit better than the next. I see one gorgeous fir and think, "There’s probably an even better one around the corner." This one is too stubby. This one is too leggy. Now I’m getting too picky. It’s a tree that will soon be covered in ornaments and lights. But it matters, especially in this moment.
We could have kept walking, but then we stumble on a giant meadow. Across the way are a dozen more trees. But between us and them is a muddy marsh and a creek winding beneath dead grass. My dog, named Squirrel, hops ahead of us, grinning and barking, and when he runs back he is absolutely covered in mud. I will not be happy if I take one step further. We turn around and make our decision.
“What about this one over here?” my husband says.
The sun is shining on a small tree. Grass is tangled in its lowest scraggly branches. It’s growing beneath two larger trees, and we want to help them get rid of a bit of competition. This one had symmetry, the right spacing between branches. It could have been the one. It almost was.
But then, at the last second, another tree calls out to me. It's in the shade and I see it from the corner of my eye. A little bit fuller. A little bit taller. Nestled in a cluster of larger neighbors. It's our tree.
I kneel down first and started pushing the saw through the bottom of the skinny trunk. Note to self: Bring a sharp tension saw. The rusty hand saw that’s been sitting in the garage forever isn’t exactly the best tool for the job. My husband takes over and not before long, the little tree comes tumbling down. He lifts it over his shoulder and carries it out of the woods. We strap the tree to the car, drive back down the hill, past the river, all the way home.
