Living here in the great Pacific Northwest virtually all my life has afforded me access to the widest variety of farm- and forest-grown Christmas trees in the country. Although for many years I’ve lived less than an hour’s drive from national forest lands where, for a $5 permit, I can cut down my own tree, I’ve never gone that route. On the surface, it has all kinds of romantic appeal: driving out on a crisp winter morning with the family, armed with thermoses filled with hot chocolate, singing carols until we find a gorgeous, perfectly shaped tree just begging to be our tree. From discussions with friends who’ve pursued trees that way, I know the reality is quite different. One can drive for miles on muddy, winding logging roads (getting lost is routine), hiking up and down steep slopes while no one can agree on which tree is the best of some pretty straggly, deer-broused specimens. The wise ones may go on several scouting excursions during the summer during camping trips so that, come December, the chosen one has already been anointed and can be (relatively) quickly brought home. The not-so-wise ones, like a couple just this past week from our area, drive out, get lost and stuck in the snow on some remote road without any kind of survival gear and spend a couple of cold, frightening nights in their car until they are found or dig themselves out. As I said, so far we haven’t gone that route. Growing up, I recall going with my dad to tree lots, sometimes outside the local grocery store, some located at a county road intersection out in the country. In those (1960s) days, even the farmed trees were not the sheared, perfectly cone-shaped clones one sees everywhere today. It was quite a challenge to find O Tannenbaum that didn’t have large gaps in its branches or wasn’t practically bare on one side. We always found our tree, though, and I loved bringing that lovely, foresty scent into the house. I guess that’s the main reason why, even with all the conveniences they offer, I’ve never seriously considered using a fake tree. When our girls came along, we began traveling to U-cut Christmas tree farms in pursuit of the annual tree. They offer a bit of the traveling-to-the-forest sort of experience without all the negative, scary parts. In western Oregon and Washington, one’s options can even include places which offer hay rides, visits with Santa, candy canes and hot cocoa and fully stocked gift shops. We found that if we didn’t get out to choose our tree right after Thanksgiving, it was much harder to find a really good one (yes, there are pills even among all those carefully tended trees), which meant cutting a tree earlier than we really wanted to. When we moved to the drier side of the Cascades several years ago, there was only one tree farm even remotely nearby, but the owners there had a system which was absolutely brilliant. Starting the last weekend in October, one could drive out and pick out a tree. After choosing a tree, one plucked one of twin tags sporting an identifying location number, took it to the office, paid (we never spent more than $50 for a 12-foot beauty) and headed home. Secure in knowing we had our “dibs” in on our tree, we could then return when we were actually ready to decorate it, so it could be as fresh as possible. No need to cut it too early or track through 18 inches of snow to try to choose a half-buried tree; just show up with your tag and wait a few minutes while the nice man hopped on his trailer-towing snowmobile to cut your tree down and bring it to your car. Why doesn’t every place do that?! We don’t have any tree farms nearby in our new hometown here in Southern Oregon, so this year’s tree would have to come from a lot . . . not quite as fresh as cutting your own, but still grown within the state and probably cut only a week or so ago. The majority of trees sold in California, Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico come from the Northwest, but I’ve seen trucks loaded with trees heading south on I-5 in October, so I’m not complaining. Yesterday we found the perfect tree for our first Christmas in our new home. We were looking for something at least 10 feet tall to accomodate the cathedral ceiling in our living room and all the ornaments we’ve collected over the years, and there weren’t a great number to choose from. Our third stop presented us with a nice, full (but not-too-full) Noble fir whose trunk would fit our tree stand. It will sit outside in a bucket for another week or so, and then I’ll bring it and that wonderful evergreen scent in to fill the house with Christmas. — Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader