I had hoped to skip the Christmas tree (it’s not my holiday, it’s not much of a celebratory year, Chanukah came and went well before Xmas, it’s a waste of a live tree…just to name a few), but my 13-year old really wanted to chop down a tree again so chop down a tree we did.

I don’t know the name of the u-cut place Andy showed us three years ago and I wasn’t sure it was open, so I did a bike-by a few Saturdays ago and got the details–open Friday-Sunday 7:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m., any tree $30. The following day the 13-year-old tree chopper and I (and Pixie) bundled up and biked down.

Though not tree-related, the best thing we encountered was Milwaukie’s new mural by Jeremy Okai Davis of Bing-cherry-creator Ah Bing and Dorothy and Hurtis Hadley, owners of Oregon’s first Black-owned bakery.

The tree experience was the same as usual–grab a saw, tromp around in search of the perfect tree, watch the kid hack at it for a while, then finish the job myself. This year he dragged the tree most of the way back to the bike so that was new. And perhaps next year he’ll be big enough to do all the sawing.

I tell myself we avoid the big hill on the ride home for the sake of the kid(s), but it’s just as much about me not having to haul the weight of the tree up the big slope. Plus, the flat way home takes us by Cartlandia for lunch to-go. Thus our trip is four and a half miles (38 minutes) there versus seven miles (one hour) back. I’m still amazed there’s such a place so close to home.