The Perfect Tree

Have you ever wondered if Mrs. Claus and I have a Christmas tree up year round ?

Oh no! Just like you, we only have one at Christmas time and today Mrs. Claus and I flew south to get our Christmas tree, in the sleigh, which Mrs. Claus loves but rarely gets to do.

We flew with the birds over miles of lonesome snowy white tundra sparkling like a field of diamonds. We flew over seas of migrating elk and deer. We flew over hungry wolves hopping in the drifts looking for something, anything to eat. We flew over Siberian Pine trees older than me! Well, maybe not older than me but very nearly.

Finally, we flew over a river and through the woods to where a dear old, old, friend of ours lives nestled at the bottom of a small mountain in a forest of Christmas trees.

Our friend Nik invited us to come visit him and choose our tree! So Mrs. Claus and I bundled up our grand daughter Ellery, our dog Artemis, and ourselves into the sleigh with some cocoa (of course) and a sharp saw excited to find the perfect tree; not too TALL and not too wee; not too BUSHY and not too sparse…

The smoke from Nik’s fire met our cold pink noses as we slowly descended over his house… lower and lower until Hedley, Brawley, Hansel and Klondyke’s hooves reunited with the ground.

Nik came bounding out of his house to greet us in the wild storm of snow the reindeer’s hooves and sleigh runners had kicked up! It is impossible to guess how old Nik really is by the way he bounds up and down his mountain, sure footed old goat. You would never know he can barely see anything anymore. We have known Nik soooo long, so unusually long for a human, that recently I have begun to suspect he must be part elf…

We followed a deer path that meandered gently up and up until we had nearly come all the way around to the back side of Nik’s farm. Ellery would be very disappointed if we came all this way only to go home without a tree to decorate. And so we stood, all of us, looking up the high side of the mountain and then down down below us…

Well, this was it. This was our chance. We had to find a tree! And so I left the path with the great determination of a grandfather on a mission. I hiked straight up the steep mountain side fully expecting there to be no way for my boots to grip the slippery slope, but to my great surprise and delight my boots did grip and so I climbed toward a tree that looked wonderful… until I got close enough to see many of its branches were quite brown.

Wandering from one “I see one !” to another led me huffing and puffing quite high up the mountainside. Suddenly thoughts of my delicate, just healing collar bone made me wonder how far up I’d gone… I turned to look back to where the others were standing down below and there was Mrs. Claus not far behind me and there next to Mrs Claus was THE ONE! We had walked right by the perfect tree!

Reaching gingerly from tree to tree we were able to slow the speed with which gravity tried to send us careening down the slippery, snowy mountainside and reach the bottom safe and sound richer by one perfect Christmas Tree!

Et voila! That is how this extraordinary tree (they always look bigger indoors somehow don’t they?) came to be standing in our living room happily overburdened with over a thousand years of pretty shiny baubles and balls, squirrels and snowmen, fish and cupcakes, birds, bees, butterflies, and and and…

Tagged as: Christmas Tree, Mrs Claus, Santa