Our Buddhist Christmas Tree 2010
It was our eighth year, making our way up Vertical Mile Road in the Northeast Kingdom on a snowy December afternoon in search of a tree. Of course, my excitement was high as we slid around the corner into the parking lot at the Buddhist Christmas tree farm we have been visiting once a year since 2003.
By now each trip is entwined with memories of past visits. The first year after cutting the tree, I nearly backed the car into our friends’ brook and had a revelation about mindfulness (or lack there of). Another year in the driveway of the tree farm I put on a performance worthy of Chevy Chase slipping and sliding and crashing every time I tried to take a step on the glaze ice surface covered by a dusting of snow. Moments later we had the same experience on the road going down Vertical Mile Road and that was to be the year our daughter Julia dropped out of the quest. Five years ago it was just our son Miles and me making the trip, arriving in the Kingdom late at night, traveling through a storm on a snowy road, seeing a deer dash across it and listening to Neil Young full bore.
This time it was Brett and me with our dear friends Doug and Alice, forty year residents of the Kingdom. The kids are now off at college and we promised to email them pictures from the hunt. On the way up I had been thinking we should visit the farm’s upper field where we had found some particularly beautiful trees. Lust and Desire crept in.
Getting out the car we met the Christmas tree farmers, artists, practicing Buddhists, Greg and Ann. I hinted that we might like to try upper field; Greg told me they had sold all of those trees to a New York City wholesaler and that they were winding down their tree farming. My heart sank. I looked to the left and saw that the lower field saw was nearly half cut with no replacements. A new line of prayer flags connected the barn and their house, an older set of prayer flags headed off perpendicular to the new line. The fabric of the flags on the old line was in the final stages of disintegration from the wind, rain, snow and air.
The four of us walked through the field and found several beauties. Our kids had long ago imposed a decision making discipline on Brett and me. No more long weekends visiting twenty tree farms. And it stayed with us this snowy afternoon as we had a brief, spirited conversation before my saw blade met one of the trunks. Doug and I hauled the tree to the baler. Greg ran it through and in a few minutes the tree was on the top of our car secured by baling twine and bungee cords.
We drove back to Glover through the twilight and then the night. Lights twinkled on outdoor trees and we could see the outline of the mountains against the sky in the distance. That evening as we sat with our friends in their newly built sauna by their woods and brook where I had almost deposited our car eight years ago, I realized that the day’s experience was a gentle lesson about impermanence. Not as a sad thing, but rather the simple fact of being and almost inviting in this new light. All in a beautiful place with dear friends and still connected to our memories and wishes and most importantly to those we know and love even if not present in the sauna that frigid night.. and let’s not forget outside we had the best Christmas tree ever on top of the car that would last forever!!!!!!!!! Ooops, backslid there a bit. Edit.
And, as they say, you never read the same blog post twice…or if you are reading this now, thanks for reading it once. (See archived post for previous tree adventure).
