The year of the blue tree, part 3

A continuing soap opera of Christmas hubris...

I hike back and report the unfortunate news. No problem! We can make it, Mike decides. He has not seen the road, but he is a man, and he knows these things, and so I nod, throwing out small female warnings about the small lake in the road and the deep ruts with the ice and pools and muck and so forth. The tree is halfway sawn. As it's getting gloomy, we hike over hill, dale, stream-with-hummocks. Etc. We drive the van down the muddy road, and we get stuck. Most stuck; also, completely stuck. Thinking of my three children in the dark, I start to implore the Ruler of the Universe and his angels, then decide it is silly to bother Him with the likes of a mudhole inthe backwater of Otsego county. There are women with three children in far worse fixes than mine who need some attention. Despite my having lodged only about a quarter-prayer, rescue arrives fairly promptly, a lot quicker than AAA would have. Mike hikes over to the charming nineteenth-century cottage, which is dark,and on to the century-later replacement, which is not. The angelic Mr. Tilley arrives on his rather small tractor. We slide backward and forward for a time.The owner of the tree farm happens by, and goes to fetch his very large (and powerfully red and Blakean) tractor. A family of four stops by, just for the interest of the thing: a rural frolic. We are now a party of ten, minus Mike, who has gone off in the pitchy dark to finish sawing down the blue spruce with his lovely antique bucksaw. There is no moonlight and no starlight because the sky is socked in with shoals of tightly packed cloud.

To be continued...

The year of the blue tree, part 2

A continuing saga of havoc, over-reaching, and Christmas Slightly Past...

We come to a wilderness of hummocks--mysterious long-haired tuffets. Beyond are willow shoots and a stream. I have a sudden memory of crossing a glacial morraine in western Canada, toiling over endless stones until I reached the green mouth of an ice cave, pale green and scary. Some memories one really should pay attention to.... I forget about the Canadian warning. Canadians are sedate and conventional, right? That's what they're always telling us. So maybe we don't want to take any Canadian advice. We toil on. The first blue spruce we find is satisfyingly blue and big, and Mike desires it--either that, or the equally large fir just behind it. By this time, the van is a mere lozenge in the distance. Before any decision is made, we must scrutinize every other tree in the meadow. We don't mind this. We find lots of holes where trees have been dug, all laced up with bands of fairy ice, some of it with milky swirls, ribbons, and ice leaves. N stomps in a big one. We go back to the first blue spruce. It is very big, bigger than I had thought. Mike flourishes his bucksaw, the very old kind that decorates country restaurants and is never used, and he starts to saw. N sits down with his legs aspraddle, and B makes helpful noises. I offer to go down the grassy rut and see if there is a passable connecting road, so that we don't have to drag a giant blue tree over hill, dale, hummocks, stream, etc. (Babe the Blue Ox, where are ye?) There is a road, but it is a dirt road with muddy ruts, and the stream loves it and laves it with enthusiasm--there is a pool about 12 feet long and 4-5 inches deep, measured on my boots--B's outgrown red rubber boots.

The year of the blue tree, part 1

A saga of astonishing foolhardiness, to be continued tomorrow...

Mid-afternoon: we decide that we must get a tree because on our only other possible free day, we have a morning baptism five hours away in Malone (nephew Cambrie, heir to the local French Canadian cheese houses of Camembert and Brie) and an evening pageant in Templeton. So we head off to a tree farm owned by a nurse at Bassett, a pleasantly haphazard place where we found a perfect nine-foot tree for a mere ten dollars last year. R complains that it is not as much fun when there is no snow and no dog to romp in it, and why can't we take the dog and the (alas, say I) visiting puppy? We get lost. We ask for directions. We find another tree farm on a dirt road, where the trees are twice as much. That's still a bargain. First, we tromp up a mountainside where the trees are comically shaped, like mountain cows with their legs shorter on one side than the other. We decide to hike along the valley, where the Douglas firs appear to be pleasantly punctuated with blue spruce. It would be fun to have one of those for a change, some sadly mistaken person decides. It might even have been me. We walk, even N, who is already tired but toddles along in his red boots and his foot-tall blue hat. R does not walk because she seems 15 and hormonal today, even though she is only 10. She stays in the car with the doors locked against passing bad guys. Nobody at all passes. It is a little dirt road.

Snow Day in the Writing Room

From the window of my writing room, I can see Otsego Lake, with Kingfisher Tower floating on its surface. Summer, I barely glimpse them through a gap between the trees of the yard behind us--the rail magnate's mansion eats up half the block with house and trees. The trees are mature, all planted by somebody in the nineteenth-century who "collected" them as rarities. Last year a Kentucky coffee tree from the neighbor's yard fell on our garage, and the canopy filled up the alley with magical jungle.

In the winter I see more of the lake and the hills around Kingfisher from my writing room. Today I see slate-blue water, ice, snow, and a tiny blue Kingfisher Tower pointing toward heavy clouds. It has snowed and snowed, and there is no school. No school spelling bee, no dentist, no karate. Just three children who want to read and frolic. Outside, the wind rocks the evergreens and spills snow, and Main Street is all garlands and Christmas, with good Saint Nicholas nestled inside a tiny Gothic Cottage next to the Tunnicliff Inn, ready to hear children's wishes and to tell a story; inside, all is cosy and bright, with books and games scattered on the floor.