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Thursday, January 27, 2011

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts...

Nothing marks the passing of time like Christmas. It is the exclamation point on the sentence that is the year. Each Christmas, like each year has its’ distinguishing features that mark it from all the rest. There are, for most of us the magical Christmases of youth. Defined and frozen in memory with the joy of the season. But in each passing year there is some moment which recaptures; or comes close, the magic of youth. The unspoiled promise that catches the spirit of the season. Even now; with childhood a distant memory I still seek out that moment. I usually find it too. Though not always where I might expect…
Being the manager of a former HBC post on the banks of the Liard River in the southern NWT I found myself living in a house that I have lived before and since. In corporate lingo it is colloquially called a DB12. I do not even know what the DB stands for. I do know they come in several different layouts. Most have four bedrooms. It was such a house that I lived in on the banks of the Liard. We also owned a tiny dilapidated trailer which the local children called the leggo block because of its’ blue color and the fact that it had virtually no windows. A flood had left the trailer somewhat the worse for wear and the company decided to build a new house for my assistant. When I heard how much they were going to spend I told them they were crazy. I could get them an existing house with land for less than half that much. They called my bluff. I knew of two houses for sale and about what the owners wanted for them. I put it in writing and sent it off to headquarters at the center of our universe and coincidentally, the center of Canada at Winnipeg. In due course they asked me to get a professional involved. I found a real estate agent who had always wanted to come for a visit I offered him a bed and a decent meal and he looked at the two properties and set a price.
We ended up buying a two story log home nestled in the woods. It had belonged to an old friend and helped him out of a scrape so it was a good deal all around. I would take the cottage in the woods and my assistant would have the venerable DB12. I loved the change. My first day off I wandered out onto my deck, coffee in hand and turned to my left to see a bull moose not thirty feet away. There is something surreal when you are half awake about staring at something that huge. I took another sip of java. I closed my eyes. I opened them again, he was still there, chin resting on my clothesline. “Cheers!” I said raising my mug. “Thanks for the welcome to the neighborhood.” As I walked the deck I planned where the bird feeders would go. I hung my black powder rifle on the wall, my Bearskin rug. It really was starting to look homey.
Summer had fled the arctic when one evening my friend Scott and I were sitting around the open plan living room a birch fire crackling in the woodstove. He pointed at the front wall with the neck of his beer bottle “You know you gotta have a big tree this year!” I was floored. I hadn’t even given Christmas a thought yet. Scott was famous for his trees. He too lived in a log house. A beautiful log house. He too had an open plan living room with a loft. He too had twenty foot ceilings. “There aren’t many of us who can. It’s your duty!” He said this like we were facing the Carthaginians at the battle of Zama. “My duty?” I repeated meekly. “Say it properly, MY DUTY!” he repeated. I was warming to the idea, the concept if not the logistics. “MY DUTY!” I declared and we clinked bottles. As I swallowed I was running the logistics through my mind. What had I gotten into?
Christmas approached as it always did, not on kitty cat paws like the fog, more like the piano or giant anvil in a Roadrunner cartoon, just boom a swirl of dust, the Roadrunner sticks his tongue out at you a few times and it is there. To tell the truth I had not figured out any of the what, where when and how of getting an eighteen foot fir tree into my living room. Scott was undaunted. At our every meeting he raised his thumb and gave me a surreptitious wink. It was like we were part of a fraternity. He would whisper to me “two weeks to tree day” then “Ten days to tree day.” It was like the doomed man watching his last hours ticking down. On tree day minus one Scott came over again. We were sitting in my living room like before so I came right out and asked “How the heck do we get a twenty foot tree into my living room?” He laughed. “I am the master of the Christmas tree. Do not worry grasshopper you are in good hands. I have it all worked out .We use my truck.” It was a 16 foot body job. “How does that help, won’t it be too short?” I queried. “Oh ye of little faith, am I not the master?” he said with a smile that some could have seen as a little bit twisted. “Yes master, but how do you get an 18 foot tree into a 16 foot truck?” I replied. He was glowing now. He seemed to take on the demeanor of a mad scientist. “The same way I got that 18 foot canoe in, remember?” I did in fact remember. I remember the same look on his face when he opened the door that time too. “Alright master how do we stop all the needles falling off in the cold?” We both had been up north long enough to know that in the extreme cold up here trees get very dry and can lose all the needles when suddenly warmed up. “Grasshopper, grasshopper, you have no faith in my powers. We put the tree in the truck. TWO FULL DAYS before we bring it in. We warm it up gradually with the space heater. We then bind the limbs when they are supple and we bring it in butt first through that!” He said this with a smile snapping around and pointing to the sliding patio door with a flourish like the prosecutor at the Salem trials yelling “Witch!”
I had to admit it sounded good. I couldn’t think of a rebuttal. As we parted he added “When you can snatch the pine cones from my hand it will be time for you to go.” I was shaking my head as he started his truck. I slept fitfully dreaming of giant evergreens busting holes in my roof and knocking over appliances. When I awoke Scott was already at the door. “What are you waiting for? I thought you were going to sleep all day!” he said brushing by me. “Just how long have you been out there?” I asked pouring us both a coffee. “Travel mugs, grasshopper!” He said handing it back to me. “We are burning daylight!” He added this last part in a very bad John Wayne impersonation. I dressed while he paced. He seemed a man possessed. When I came down stairs he looked me straight in the eye and said “I love the smell of balsam in the morning, it smells like; VICTORY!” He spun on his heel and fled. I followed as quickly as I could. He nearly bounced into the cab. I swung in beside him. “Do you have any place in mind?” I asked holding my hands out to the defroster. “Any place in mind?” He replied mockingly. “I have thought of nothing else since the night we hatched this crazy scheme!” He said his knuckles white on the wheel. We rose out of the valley, still shrouded in winter ice fog, its’ residents still asnooze in their beds as we left Whoville behind. “We are just cutting a tree.” I replied calmly. “We are not pulling off the great train robbery.” “But not just any tree!” Scott added with what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. “This will be a tree that people will talk about for years!” The truck reached the junction and Scott turned left towards Fort Simpson and punched the gas.
Now Scott brings our freight some weeks as he and his partner are our freight handlers. But he drives the road to Fort Nelson B.C. not the Fort Simpson road. If he had found a tree here then he had to have made a special trip to find it. At this point, half frozen and only half awake I wasn’t sure if I was impressed or scared by this realization. We drove quite a ways. The highway follows the contours of the valley, the land to the driver’s side falling off quite dramatically giving us a beautiful view of the picturesque valley the tree tops capped with marshmallow snow. Scott’s eyes followed the contours out his door. We came upon a stream, now just a strip of still white snow passing under the bridge we were crossing. “THERE!” Scott breathed more than spoke. “See it! THERE!” In fact I did not see it. But Scott had not waited for my reply. He had parked the truck set the brake and slid from the cab in one motion. He already had the back door open when I rounded the rear of the truck. He appeared above me in the box of the truck with the biggest power saw I had ever seen. He already looked huge as I stared up at him. The power saw made him look like leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. “That’s not saw mate!” He said in an even worse Crocodile Dundee than his previous John Wayne. “That’s a saw!” I had to laugh. It was a saw alright!
We followed a winding trail down the slope a piece. He leaned against a tree. “Look up, way up.” He said with a smile. “And I’ll call Rusty!” I added. “Is this it?” I said in awe. “None other grasshopper.” He replied readying the saw. I had to admit it was beautiful. He notched it and felled it expertly. He really had done this before. As I looked at the thing on the ground I said to Scott “Uh, Scott…” my voice trailed off. Scott got serious for a moment. He squeezed my elbow. “I am way ahead of you, buddy! I was a silviculturist remember? This tree is going to open up this area.” He said making an arc with the blade of the silent saw. “See these three little guys? Soon there will be three trees using the sunlight that just one tree was taking before. Trust an old hippy.” He had read my mind. We put the tree in the truck from corner to corner and damned if it didn’t just fit.
He dropped me at my place. “I can’t wait to see it up!” I said from the ground as he leaned across the cab to close the door. “Patience grasshopper, patience.” He said tossing me my mug. Two days seemed like two years. I had almost forgotten how time could slow down at Christmas. Like it had when I was a boy. But true to his word two days later Scott returned. When he opened the back door of the truck I could see he had been busy the tree was trussed up like a hostage. I had already prepped the living room and shoveled a path to the patio doors and shoveled the deck. We carried the tree to the back door and straightened it out to its’ full length. We had to take the door off the track as it wouldn’t quite go through but eventually we had the tree in the room. Steve untrussed it. I stared at it in awe. It was magnificent. Huge. “How do we get it to stand up?” It had just occurred to me that the butt of this tree would never fit the tree stand that I had. It had to be six or eight inches wide. “Oh ye of little faith.” Scott chided me. “You are thinking backwards. We will not stand it up.” He said cryptically. “What then? Lay it down?” I asked. He wagged a finger and tut-tutted. “We will not stand the tree up we will hang it!” I thought for a minute. The top of the tree would be less than two feet from the roof log. “Brilliant!” I exclaimed. “I bet no one will even know!” “Yes.” Scott replied “But this must be our little secret. I have done it this way for years and no one was the wiser.” It certainly fooled me. We dummied up the base and put the tree in a wash basin full of water. We then took braided wire and put an eye screw in the roof log and secured it to the trunk mid way down the stem. The tree would actually swing if you pushed the base. It was a thing of beauty. Scott held out his hand. There were two cones in it. “From the top of your tree.” He said. “Only fire will open them up. I will show you the seeds when we roast them open.” I took the cones... “My work is done here grasshopper, you have snatched the cones from my hands it is time for me to go.” I laughed. “You tricked me!” I said. “It’s late.” He said and turned to go.
I went to sleep with the whole house filled with the smell of evergreen. The reason that Scott had left early became apparent the next day. I called him. “As we speak I am staring at the pathetic box of decorations that usually fills my seven -footer.” I said. “Ah yes, there is one more rite of passage before you can be initiated into the two story tree club. That is the opening of the wallet ceremony. Good luck!” That night my friends gathered around and helped me decorate. I bought every string of lights and ornament in town. It still looked a bit Charlie Brownish, but everyone brought some decoration. Nothing new and nothing valuable I told everyone. There were hand-made decorations of paper and plastic balls of all sizes and colors. We hung all my Christmas cards on the tree. Dozens of candy canes, one of the nurses baked cookies with yarn in them that could be hung as ornaments, although a few did not make it to the tree. When we were done all gathered proclaimed it a good tree. Scott was the happiest of all. He got to turn on the power bar that lit the tree. Everyone oohed and ahhhed.
I stepped back to take it all in. Not just the tree but the whole tableau. Scott on the couch with a Santa hat on, beaming; he had just initiated me into his club. The nurses admiring their handiwork. My golden retriever curled up in from of the wood stove. More friends pouring punch from a bowl. There it was, the moment I was waiting for. In that room in that moment, thousands of miles from family. Thousands of miles from the Christmases of my youth. In the laughter of my friends; in the peace of that inky arctic night, snug in that wonderful house so far it seemed from the icy winter winds outside, there was what I had been looking for. The magic of Christmas. It is always the last place you look.