Archives
17/12: No tree's were harmed for our decorations
All of our grennery came from volunteers - Strong winds of a months ago brought down the trees that provided the greenery on our porch posts - the tree tops in the urns came from the camp in Adirondacks, where a cluster of tall pines came down in the same wind storm.
17/12: Mitten Tree
Last Sunday, after fellowship, The RE kids and Parents drove up to Onsciota, to cut down our fellowship “mitten tree”. It was warm in the valley, but as we drove higher and higher into the Adirondacks the air became cooler, and snow was on the ground. We were greeted with about five inches of snow at the camp, great packing snow, the kind that makes a perfect snowball. And before long the snowballs were flying through the air – it was like a battle zone. A group of us escaped fire trudged off in the snow, and found the right tree – the top of a forty foot pine, and taking turns with a bow saw we brought it down.Standing in the cold air and smelling the pine reminded me of Tory and my first Christmas. We lived in Utah, and had been married only four months. We had no money to fly to either of our parents for Christmas, we had no money even for a tree. The days before Christmas started to look very stark, and to help us forget that we were far away from our families we drove up to a ghost town we liked to explore. Again, there had been no snow in the valley, but as we drove further up into the mountains, and through the scrub pines, snow began to appear. we trudged through the snow up around the old cluster of buildings the clung to the foot of the mountain, near the mouth of an old copper mine. We walked in and out of the abandoned houses and in one of the barns we saw an old rusty saw, we looked at it at the same time, and then looked at one another - it as a sign. we clambered back down through the snow, following our footsteps in the full moon. We wound our way back down the mountain, Just outside of Eureka, on BLM land we pulled off the shoulder at a spot where we saw the silhoutte of scrub pines against the white. We took out the rusty old saw and cut a small tree – about two feet high. Back at our little basement apartment We had no tree stand – we used old rusty train spring, and we had not lights – we had only a small tin full of small yellow wooden star ornaments, with red thread hangers Tory’s mom had sent her.
That is one of my favorite trees. I can remember little else from that Christmas, but I remember that tree, the snow, and the cool air of the mountains. People pay a lot of money for the perfect tree – believing it will make Christmas perfect. But I prefer an imperfect Christmas tree, surrounded by the right people, with the right spirit.
That’s what I was thinking last Sunday in Onciota, as we stood around that fallen tree, and that’s what I was thinking when cold wet snowball hit me in the back of the head. I wish you all could have been there – it was a great snowball fight, it’s a great “mitten tree”.
11/12: Packing away
When Margaret, our neighbor in the big stone house, moved to West Chazy from Southern California, she found herself involved in a few seasonal New England rituals. For the first time she found herself packing away her summer clothes in boxes in the attic, and dragging out her winter coats, long johns, and sweaters. We do the same, stashing away shorts and t-shirts and dragging out winter clothes from the small attic space above the Dining room. Yesterday Tory pulled out a small black fur lined boot – about the right size for Lizzie now, and noticed it was a bit heavy, she turned it up and poured into out a heaping handful of maple seeds, their little wings chewed off tidily, and stashed away by some little creature for the cold days of winter. Each one of those little seeds was probably walked up one at time and placed In that boot over a period of weeks. Like our own basement full of cut, split and stacked wood.Last year, like many years, their was much talk of the increase in heating oil prices, and the news reported that some elderly people in the Midwest were being forced to close the doors on some rooms of their homes and not heat them. This seemed like old news to me, almost every big old home I knew of growing up had an area only open in the summer. The entire front section of the house I grew up in we kids growing up referred to as “the cold room” and I remember dashing up the front stairs, where mom stored acorn squash and apples, to get the Christmas ornaments in the upstairs closet, with our breath making clouds in the cold.
The winter clothes: woolen caps, sweater, and ice skates, have made their way out now. The summer clothes have been packed away in old suitcases. We are closing the door on that small attic space, warm weather clothes folded and bagged: t-shirts, shorts, sandles, along with a fuzzy black boot full of maple seed.
