This year I decided to buy a permit to cut down my own Christmas tree. The problem is I waited too long. In my area they sell permits for Coconino and Tonto National Forests. By the time I got online to buy one the permits for Coconino were all gone and I had to get one for Tonto. I honestly don't know if it would have made a difference. I know when I was hiking a few years back along the Mogollon Rim there were lots of Christmas trees but I don't think those can be cut down. I was going to venture out to that area anyways and see if any were outside of the no cut zone.
I didn't take a good look at the map before our adventure to find a tree. When we got up the mountain I turned towards where I knew good trees were. The problem is I kept seeing signs saying Coconino National Forest. I had to find a place with signal to get online and look at the map just to find out that Tonto was a couple miles south of where I was planning on finding a tree. So I had to turn around and drive towards Strawberry. The road there loops around the rim so even though it's only a couple miles distance as the crow flies its something like 20-30 miles on the road.
We spent half the day driving up and down forest roads. There were trees that were good, but they were 40 feet tall and only the top was good. You can't top the trees, so the pickings were slim. We were about to just give up and go home when we saw someone driving out of a forest road with a tree. We spent the next two hours finding and cutting down our tree, a Ponderosa Pine!
Most trees used for Christmas are not pine, unless you're Charlie Brown. They sell firs and spruce, the exception being the rarely used white pine. Well, there aren't any spruce in this area, so we got us a pine.
Once we got it home and put it in our living room we realized how bare the tree is in some spots. Zach and Dean love the tree. Adri looked like she was going to cry, and apparently Natalie likes to sit in front of the tree drinking her morning coffee laughing. My thought is who cares what it looks like? No one is going to remember last year's tree but they'll always remember this one and what we had to go through to get it. Besides 2020 isn't a normal year, so why get a normal tree?
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