By Mike Eldred
I’ll never forget my family’s first, and last, attempt at stalking the wild Christmas tree. I can’t remember exactly why my mother decided to forgo the tree farm variety that year; it may have been budget-related. It was the late 1970s, a time when inflation was rampant, and most family’s budgets were stretched thin. But it may have been the excitement of playing the role of hardy pioneer, or anticipation of enjoying the fruits of one’s own land – the triumph of independence from the commercial world.
Whatever the reason, my mother, my sisters and I all bundled up in our winter gear and, with bow saw in hand, trundled off to get our tree. The three of us kids looked like a trio of plump sausages stuffed into our puffy winter coats. This was northern Maine in the middle of December, and it was cold.
We were headed to a 40 acre parcel of land we owned in Charleston, Maine, which sat precisely in the middle of nowhere. To this day, the parcel is a microcosm of the local natural habitats. There are fields, softwood groves, hardwood groves, rocky and windswept hilltops, damp lowlands, and even a cedar swamp.
If the agricultural activity in the surrounding fields was any indication, the land had probably hosted a farm long ago. It was littered with rusty old farm implements and other signs of earlier habitation. Since farm activity had ceased, however, the forest started creeping in to take over the fields. One of the first intruders into the former meadowland was our sylvan prey: The bushy Maine firs, spruces and pines. We weren’t exactly sure which variety we wanted yet.
When we arrived, we rolled out of the car into a stiff, bitter winter wind. Our land, on which my mother has since built her home, was apparently the focal point of all the wind in the state of Maine. The steady blast of arctic air was only interrupted by fierce gusts that threatened to send my two younger sisters airborne. We all suffered instantaneous headaches from the icy blast, despite our thick wool caps.
Expansive snowdrifts were another consequence of the steady wind. We trudged through the waist-deep snow, my mother breaking trail in the lead, me following behind her, and my sisters struggling to walk in our footsteps.
After struggling across the frozen tundra, our hearts sank as we cleared a final rise and saw what lay ahead of us. Why we had never noticed before, I don’t know. But our 40 acres of independence produced what were arguably the ugliest trees on the face of the earth.
The combination of the thin, rocky soil, depleted of any nutrient value, and the incessant blast of wind had shaped our trees into stunted, gnarly, sparse, bent caricatures of real trees.
We were panicked. What would we do? The work involved in just getting to where we stood precluded any thought of returning empty-handed. But the idea of trying to string lights and tinsel on one of these aberrant stumps seemed ridiculous.
We walked around, from one wind-mangled heap of tree to another, our disappointment growing with each step. But as we rounded one clump of twisted pines, there it was! A spruce tree! And, unlike any of the other freakish trees surrounding it, this tree was symmetrical, it was even shapely!
It was the most beautiful tree I had ever seen. It was so beautiful, the wind itself refused to blow on it – or perhaps it was because the clump of gnarly pines in front of it had refused to let the wind through. We stopped dead in our tracks. The bright winter sun shone off every needle on the tree, making it look like a glittering six-foot diamond. Each perfectly formed branch seemed to reach out to us, welcoming us into its warm bosom. The trunk was perfectly tapered from top to bottom. The bark was smooth and blemish free. The needles couldn’t even be described as needles, they were more like soft bunches of shining silken strands.
Birds sang cheerfully and flitted about, proclaiming this tree to be the finest on earth. The tree truly epitomized the miracle of Christmas; it was a gift to us from God himself. Would we even need to put our paltry lights and baubles on this glorious monument to nature?
In the absence of wind, the blood returned to our faces and we began to warm up a little. We took turns, one of us hacking away at the base of the tree with the saw, and another pushing on the trunk so the saw wouldn’t get pinched in the kerf.
When we had finally felled the tree, we reversed our processional, proudly struggling back through our tracks with our prize precariously trailing behind on a red plastic toboggan. We got back to the car and triumphantly heaved the tree on the roof, cinched it down with clothesline, and headed home.
When we finally got home we marched our miracle tree right inside and fitted our trusty tree-stand to it. As we admired it, standing there in the corner of the living room we agreed that, yes, it would need some additional decoration despite its gleaming pulchritude. Within a couple of hours our living room was graced by a vision the likes of which can only be described as "Dickensian," sort of a Victorian ideal of the Christmas tree. One almost expected to see the ample form of Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas past beaming down at the tree.
As we, and the tree, warmed up, however, we noticed a rather unpleasant odor had permeated the room. It smelled… well, we blamed the cat. It seemed that, perhaps while we were away on our tree adventure, the cat had noted her disappointment in our absence by losing control of her bladder. And she had done so in our now lavishly decorated living room, it appeared.
As we stomped around, trying to "sniff-out" the scene of the crime and calling for the cat’s head on a platter, we noticed the rank stench was mighty strong in the vicinity of the tree. Had she managed to sneak in and do the deed when we weren’t looking? The smell grew stronger as we, and the tree, continued to warm up. Had we managed to cut down the one tree every animal in the forest used as a bathroom? Sure enough, upon closer inspection, the odor was definitely emanating from our magical tree.
It wasn’t until several days later that we learned there is a species of spruce known colloquially as a "cat spruce." The name is well-deserved, the tree itself reeks like a litter box gone rogue. Perhaps it’s a natural defense mechanism that keeps parasites – and everything else – from using the tree as a food source or habitat. Whatever it is – it stinks.
We kept our hard-earned and odiferous tree that year. But Christmas day wasn’t even over and we had already stripped it of decoration and flung it out the door. After that, we never attempted to cut our own tree again. We cheerfully bought tree-farm trees and enjoyed the sweet, refreshing scent of balsam.
M.E.