Doh! Christmas tree
When you get your own tree, just be careful it doesn't get you

This morning I woke up, and my hand hurt. To be fair, it hurt throughout the night. But instead of doing anything about it, I just went back to sleep and let my unconscious brain process the pain with dreams of fingers falling off, infections, gangrene and death.

Sure, I noticed the now-scabbing gashes on two fingers right after the injury occurred. At the time, however, I wrote them off as minor flesh wounds. But when I awoke this morning and my entire hand was throbbing, I was convinced I needed immediate medical attention.

The incident had occurred two days earlier. It was a lazy Saturday, and I had let my morning spiral into a pajama afternoon. Right when I snapped out of my lackluster state, my roommate walked by, quietly trying to mind his own business. I jumped out from behind my book and into his face.

“LET’S GO GET A CHRISTMAS TREE!” I demanded.

“Yeah, OK,” was his response. I am still not sure whether it was agreeance, complacency or terror that I saw in his eyes.

Regardless, we gathered up our necessities, bought a Christmas tree tag and drove out into the forest.

The parking lot was surrounded by beautiful trees. In fact, the entire road to the parking lot was lined with plenty of easy-access options for living room adornment. But as it turns out, you have to work hard to Christmas tree hard.

When we began the expedition, I was a bit behind Roomie as I had to gather all my jackets, gloves, camera gear, dog, etc. I followed him along a snow-packed trail, arms full, gazing up at the trees until I realized that he had disappeared. Following his foot-prints, I found myself peering over the edge of a ravine, down a hundred feet to where he was standing next to three spruce.

“What about these?” He yelled up.

I looked at the two-foot perimeter immediately surrounding me, seeing trees – just like the ones he was standing next to – which would do just fine. But Roomie works for the Forest Service, so somehow that must make him more knowledgeable, I reasoned.

“Yeah, those look good!” I yelled back. “Which one?” He asked.
“Uh ... that one?” I vaguely pointed at all three hoping he’d do the choosing.
I started to make my way down the side of the mountain, rather clumsily trying not to slip on ice and mud while leashed to a pulling canine companion in my Wednesday-happy-hour shoes with no traction. I fell at least three times before I made it 10 feet from him and found a place to park. But no sooner had I sat down to catch my breath than I looked up to discover Roomie had abandoned the three trees and was now wandering back up the hill.

“Or what about this one?” He asked back down to me. He was prancing around like a goddamned reindeer.

“Uh, looks good!” I yelled, from below.

And as I gathered myself to start making my way back up, he started making his way back down. “Sit! Stay!” I wanted to command. “Good Roomie.”

But instead, I waited until I was sure he had settled on the perfect tree and stumbled my way over to him.

At this point, Roomie had already whipped out his hand saw and was busily prepping for our living room’s holiday merriment. And while I consider myself a modernday feminist, I was happy to stand back and play the photographer card.

Equality for all, but I do know when to step aside and let a man saw a tree.

Soon enough, though, I became intrigued and decided to take a turn at making saw-dust. Fearing “timber!” I gave the potentially hazardous final cut to Roomie in what turned out to be a slow-motion, anticlimactic felling.

And so there we were – me, dog and the goddamned reindeer – standing on the side of a ravine with a 10-foot tree.

“I can pull if you can push,” I suggested.

He was already lifting the tree while I was still trying to get my knees unstuck from the mud, looking a little bored while waiting for the real struggle to begin.

After a forced death march over a fallen tree, an attack by a wild rose bush and a gentle slap from a branch – we burst out into the parking lot. We arrived with our prize, surrounded by no less than half a dozen families, sleds in hand. They looked at us with what I wished was respect, but was most likely pity and confusion, as if Sasquatch himself had emerged.

Despite the stares, we rolled up our sleeves, tossed the tree into the back of my truck and started to drive home, only realizing half way there that we had forgotten to buy a tree stand. So I “walk-of-shamed” back into the store where I bought the tree tag five hours earlier. The same clerk remarked, “You’re back!” (which is the equivalent of saying “Ugh. It’s you again.”) As I was nodding, plastered in mud with sticks in my hair, I noticed that two of my previously frozen fingers were covered in blood.

Tired, and eager to get home, I ignored the missing hunks of flesh – that is until I woke up this morning and was certain I would die from a rare skin-eating infection. I had always hoped for a more honorable death – or at least one that was the result of wounds received doing something rad, like climbing, biking or base jumping.

Fortunately, a few days later, I am glad to report the wounds are healing nicely – although friends and coworkers have taken great pleasure in referring to my “sausage fingers” (or worse) – with no signs of a deadly tree-induced MRSA. And I have taken to my new mystery wounds, despite their somewhat dubious and decidedly un-epic origins. No, these wounds were not caused by pride, athleticism or gnarliness, but by joy. These were wounds of Christmas merriment, the jolliest of them all.