Charlie Brown Would Be Proud: The first Christmas tree in our Galena house

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Myra, Romay, and I put on our winter gear, grabbed the hand saw from the porch and stepped out into the dark and cold.  -20 in December does not really feel all that frigid in the interior where there is no wind, and all the water is frozen solid.

            “Are you sure about this?” Romay questioned as we trudged through the knee-deep snow out into the backyard in search of our quarry. 

            “We’ve got to have one,” Myra reassured.

            “It’ll be fine,” I added, the beams from our headlamps bouncing off of the snow banks and illuminating the snow-covered spruce.

            It was Christmas Eve and the Harris house was still without a Christmas tree.  Usually, people could confirm their calendars by the arrival of a lit tree in the window of our home, Myra setting the day after Thanksgiving as our traditional tree cutting and trimming date.

            This year we had a few other irons in the fire, and though John Denver and the Muppets were often heard singing Christmas carols in our house, it was because I was singing along while plumbing the toilet, or running the waste line from the bathroom into the main line leading to our sewage box outside or grouting the tile countertops in our kitchen.

            As a way to remove ourselves from the craziness that had been house building (we started putting in the foundation just before school got out in the spring and had a flushing toilet at the beginning Christmas break), we jumped on a RAVN flight to Fairbanks to do a little shopping, eat out, and enjoy the comforts of the city for a while.  We took a cab to the lot where our truck was stored and were met by a three-foot pile of snow that had been plowed directly in the way of our front wheels.

            “I thought they said they would make sure it was clear for us before we got here,” Myra said as I dug like a gopher without a shovel.

            I broke somewhat of a path, had everyone stand back, put the truck in four low and powered through.  We shopped, saw Christmas lights, waded through currents of people in Fred Meyers and then checked into the Extended Stay, plugging in the truck as the mercury dropped to -35.

            The next day I went to the parking lot to fire up the truck and make the cab more hospitable for my girls.

            Click, click, click, click.

            “Huh,” I said to only myself, “that’s not good.”

            Another dad who had gone to the parking lot on the same mission saw my predicament and offered a jump.

            Click, click, click, click.

            “Sorry, buddy, but I’m guessing it’s not the battery,” he said as he turned the collar up on his coat.

            I pulled a hammer I stored in the cab for building crates for shipping on barges during the summer months, shimmied under the truck and gave a couple of gentle taps on the starter only to be met by the same clicking.

            A quick walk to Fred’s for a cheap socket set, and I was under the hood looking for the solenoid.  I was afraid of my starter being brittle when struck by the hammer and now I was standing in the cold taking apart plastic covers to expose wires welded in place by the frigid temperatures.

            A couple hours later, and I dialed the phone with cold, nearly useless fingers for a tow to Sunshine Rays where I would happily pay people to work on the truck in a warm environment better on my body and the truck’s workings.

            Ray, or maybe it was Sunshine, had the truck back together after replacing a solenoid and starter, and we were able to pick it up on the 23^rd.  We had no intentions of staying in town this close to Christmas, but there we were.

            RAVN thankfully had seats on the Christmas Eve afternoon flight back to Galena, and the plane touched down just as it was getting dark.  No real time to prepare our normal Christmas Eve foods, we ate what would we could find.

            So, though not ideal, the extra couple of days had pushed us to the last minute to get our tree.

            “That’s the one,” I said as we stepped up to what could only be described as Charlie Brown’s ideal tree.

            “Uh, are you sure?” Romay questioned as this tree fell definitely short of what Mom’s normal standard was.

            Myra looked at her watch, “Ten to midnight,” she stated, “this one looks about perfect.”

            The trunk couldn’t have been more than three inches in diameter as I quickly drew the saw across it and dropped the tree unceremoniously to the snow.

            The three of us high-kneed it back to the house, stuck the tree in the stand, tightened down the screws as far as they would go, threw one strand of lights on it, and stood back to admire the first Christmas tree ever to go up in our new house.

            “Um,” was Romay’s stunned word, her expression telling much more than she was verbalizing.

            “Well, I’ve seen worse,” I consoled her.

            Myra looked back at her watch, “Ten after twelve, merry Christmas, I’m going to bed.”

            It was probably the worst tree we had ever had up in our home, but this one was in a house that was ours, built with our hands, paid in full, with a woodstove that kept us toasty warm.  The daughter is grown and on her own, the house is sold and we have moved on, but that tree and how we got it still makes it one of my favorites. 

            Our tree this year is full, sturdy, strong, and beautiful.  I’m not saying I will forget this year’s tree, but in ten years, that scraggly, little humble tree will still be a clear picture in my mind.

Christmas Tree 2019 in Unalakleet... slightly more full than Christams Tree 2010 in Galena.
Merry Christmas

On Thin Ice: Some days it would be better just to stay home.

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           “Aggghhhh,” my man grunt turned into a groan of agony as I sank to my knees in the snow.  Romay and I had been loading eight-foot long sections of spruce into the back of our pickup for less than an hour when I had grabbed a hold of what I thought was a small one. 

            In relation to the others I had been loading that morning and earlier that week, it was.  Though eight feet long, it was only about eight inches across the butt, and I wasn’t really lifting, but was turning it end over end up out of the ditch and onto the road.  I must have added a slight twist to the lift and ended up not really analyzing what caused it as much as to how I was going to regain a standing position.

            I crawled on my hands and knees to the back of the truck and grabbed a hold of the lowered tailgate, pulled myself to standing and then leaned against the truck as I shuffled to the passenger side. 

            “Romay,” I yelled “we’re heading home.  You’re driving.”

            My father’s wisdom in teaching me to drive stick at a young age in case of an emergency came back to me as my fourteen-year-old daughter fired up the truck, slipped it into first gear, released the clutch and pointed us toward home.

            “You okay?” she asked as she navigated the snow filled road.

            “Yeah, just a little sore,” I said as I pressed my palm into the seat to support myself.  “I think I might have put my back out.”

            When Romay was growing up, putting my back out was a regular occurrence.  She would ambush me from the back of a chair, wrap her arms around my neck, wait until I got close to a wall or counter and then push off with her legs.  Without fail, my back would go out every time, but since living in a community with a swimming pool, my core had regained the strength needed to keep my back in place.  I had been moving over a cord of green spruce a day from the ditches to the truck for around a week though, and evidently that takes a toll on a body.

            Upon returning home, I took a hot shower, and didn’t move far from the couch for the rest of the day.  With some rest, my muscles would loosen, and my back would pop back into place unexpectedly with an audible clunk.  Rest was the answer.

            The next day was beautiful outside and Myra asked the obvious question, “Are you and Romay going to go set traps today?”

            I don’t do rest well.

            I got dressed, threw together a trapping bag and went out to get the snow machine going while Romay got ready.  Two pulls and the motor was running.  While it warmed up, I walked around to the cargo rack on the back, grabbed a hold, bent my knees and hoisted it up out of the snow where it had frozen to the ground.  Lightning shot up and down my spine and I found myself back on my knees in the snow.

            I pressed myself up and gingerly walked around to the front skis where I lifted the nose of each one to break it out of the ice.

            “You look like you are doing better today,” Myra commented as I stepped back in the house to check Romay’s progress.  She hadn’t seen me grimace and fall.

            “Yeah,” I said, “beautiful day out.”

            And it was.  Galena normally does not have wind, but December is usually way below zero.  The mercury had been flirting with zero to ten above all week, and the warmth was making most of the locals feel giddy.  It didn’t matter how my back was feeling, it was nice out, and Romay and I were going trapping.

            Romay was ready, we got on the idling machine and headed out the trail right behind our house.  It led past a couple of dry lake beds and into some beaver ponds that each held at least one lodge.  Our destination was a large pond with a lodge on it that had been inactive, but showed a lot of otter sign around it.  A pull-out hole was right next to the old lodge, and it was our plan to go and set a 220 Conibear over the hole.

            We drove up and parked the machine on the land just behind the lodge.  A couple of years earlier, I had learned why not to park next to a beaver house as we chiseled a friend’s frozen rig out.  In a moment of weakness, he had pulled up in front of it to save himself walking ten yards, dropped his machine through the ice, and then had to walk the seven miles home in the dark.

            Even though this lodge was inactive (most times a frosted vent hole or even steam coming out of the top of an active one is easily visible), there was no need to tempt fate.  I walked over and checked the hole.  It was still open.

            “Dad, can I go over on the other side?” Romay called out as I dug the trap out of the bag.

            “Sure,” I responded without looking up.

            We had a cold early winter, the ice was solid, and this lodge didn’t hold beavers anymore.  There would be no harm in her walking around behind and back out onto the ice.

            “Dad!” came a panicked yell from just over my shoulder.

            Romay had walked the opposite way I had anticipated going right over where the pull-out hole was.  I turned just in time to watch her drop through the ice and into the water.

            Three steps and I was to where she had gone in.  I snatched the coat collar of the girl now up to her chest in ice water, braced one foot on the lodge just below the water line, and yanked her up and out and onto the good ice.  Below the water, a feed pile of willows was evident, sign that beavers were there and active.  Later she would tell me that she had never touched the bottom.

            “You’re okay.  You’re going to be fine,” I reassured her as I looked into frightened eyes.

            I helped her onto the machine and fired it up with one pull of the recoil rope.  The shortest route was across an open powder filled field.  In a place of cold and little wind, snow fills in the dry lakes and fields to bottomless proportions, but with a hand on the throttle, I could maintain plane and take the short cut rather than taking the weaving, slow trail we had followed in.

            The engine screamed as we floated across the field and intersected the hard-packed trail.  The skis came up on hard snow and forced the tail of the machine down, digging a pit into the powder.  I jumped off, Romay still on the seat, I grabbed the cargo rack and willed the machine out of the thigh deep hole it had sunk into, and shoved it up far enough for the lugs of the track to gain purchase on the hard-pack.

            Back on the throttle and flying the three miles home, we passed one bewildered woodcutter who we didn’t bother to return his wave. 

            “You’re going to be all right,” I yelled over the motor.  “We’re almost home.”

            Romay stripped out of her ice coated snow gear in the arctic entry way and stiffly ran up the inside stairs to the bathroom and a warm shower.

            “What happened?” Myra asked as she watched a frightened, crying girl fly past her.

            “Thin ice,” I responded.

            Myra’s expression was enough for me to know I had been both dumb and lucky.

            Thirty minutes of hot shower water later, pajamas, a blanket, and a light-hearted movie on television, a teen girl laid curled up on the couch cuddled next to her dad.  Perhaps it would have been better had we just been there all day from the start.

Safe and comfortable in a warm home.