It was nip and tuck (nip and paw?) whether she’d make the good list or not. Inside sources say it might have been her association with Katie, but…she made it.

Merry Christmas, dudes (and Mom). Our production staff hopes to go on holiday for a bit, but Cedar may have other ideas.

On this morning’s walk in the big trees, the light called our attention to the treetops. Or the treetops called our attention to the light. Either way, fun to be reminded of the simple gift of living in the Western Hemlock-Sitka Spruce-Red Alder community. When I think about the height of big trees in our extended neighborhood, I can’t help but think of the young George Dyson (featured in The Starship and the Canoe)’s British Columbia treehouse, or Richard Nelson, waxing ecstatically from way up in a spruce in a raging North Pacific gale. For our part, Cedar and I just walked quietly and appreciatively today in the shallow snow below the giant sunlit canopies.

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Yesterday, the kids and I went out on our annual tree-cutting venture. We had limited time, so tried to use Tim’s phone to locate a clearing, and with it, ideally a patch of uneven-aged forest, in the city-allowed tree cutting zone. My hope was to find a fully-formed young spruce or hemlock without a long slog in the deep snow.

When the kids were little we had a ritual of going to spot X, where we hiked a road, and the kids often brought sleds and later skis to travel back down while Dad did the grunt work of dragging the tree home. Seems like a lifetime ago, and it was definitely a Lab (Bella) ago. I remember one time in particular when the kids climbed fairly high into a tree while I was trudging around looking for the right one to cut. I came back to a serenade of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” from two little spruce cherubs. (Can’t find the video, darn it.) Another time, the rutted road was packed beautifully for sledding. The kids took off, Bella following, and were out of sight in no time. I didn’t see Tim again until the car–most of a mile, I’d guess–but I came across Katie stopped in her sled, on the verge of tears. “I got lonely.”

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We found ourselves thrashing through tall spindly second growth yesterday, and postholing waste deep in snow, so we decided to do our part to make a clearing. Having spotted a tree top that would make a good tree, and knowing we’d need a bough long enough to keep the goods above dog Cedar height, we felled a hemlock, with some hope that we could fit most of it in our high-ceilinged living room. This time I was along for the slog home, and Tim did most of the work. Somehow the little kids were still with us, though—Katie’s rolling laughter, and Tim’s physical antics.

By evening, we had to lower our ambitions and the tree quite a bit. And so we have a Christmas treetop, the hemlock’s “weeping leader” (one of the keys to quick identification of hemlock over spruce), just brushing the ceiling. “Weeping leader” makes me think of my worst days as a principal, but it also reminds me of the soft resilience of the hemlock, this year’s new growth, faith in more light.

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