Our annual forest Christmas tree cutting adventure: Out to the Kaibab!

We’re home for the holidays!

Ryan and I returned from India last weekend and went straight into Christmas mode.

A few years ago, we started the tradition of hiking out into the forest to cut down our own Christmas tree and take photos for our annual holiday cards.

I’m a pretty firm believer that Christmas shouldn’t be celebrated until after Thanksgiving, so we typically host a Friendsgiving or Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and then spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving acquiring our Christmas tree and shooting our holiday card photos.

We were a little behind on that tradition this year since we missed Thanksgiving (we were at the Taj Mahal instead) but we were still really excited to go get our dang tree.

Ryan takes Christmas celebrations very, very seriously. He was standing on our apartment roof about nine hours after our flight landed in Flagstaff, tacking white lights across our gutters.

He also made it a point to get a Christmas tree permit for our neighboring national forest, the Kaibab, before he left for India… just in case we couldn’t get a permit for our home forest, the Coconino.

I’m glad he took the initiative to do that, because the Coconino permits sold out in 18 minutes flat, and we were fast asleep on the other side of the planet when they went on sale.

So, for the second year, we went west of Flagstaff out near Parks to collect our Christmas tree off the Kaibab’s Williams Ranger District.

In the past, I’ve written about how Ryan dragged me along for five hours of bushwhacking through stunted pines in steep, sloping drainages, but this year, I finally figured it out.

Ryan has three-day weekends, so I made him head out on Friday to go scout for trees with Ochi before dragging me along the following day.

What resulted was a mostly-pleasant three-mile hike for me on Saturday, rather than hours of stumbling through off-trail pine litter and slipping on dried pine needles along a remote forest ridge.

Very much preferable.

Ryan and I set out west of town on Saturday morning, and stopped to take our holiday card photos in a meadow along Spring Valley Road.

After a few tries (it’s always a bit difficult to wrangle an excited pup while using your DSLR’s 10-second timer function) we snapped a photo we didn’t hate, and then loaded back up into Ryan’s truck to go fetch our tree.

We ended up hiking off the Spring Valley cross country ski trails at Ryan’s suggestion.

Ryan pointed out the tree he’d found, which wasn’t too far of a hike, but wanted to know if I was interested in hiking out a little further to keep looking.

I said sure, as long as I don’t have to spend the entire day bushwhacking, and so we hiked a little further back into the forest to keep exploring.

We ran into another couple out cutting their tree, and after about two miles of wandering and hiking, we stumbled upon a tree that we both liked quite a bit better than the first tree Ryan had found the day before.

After very little deliberation, we decided the tree was perfect, and Ryan pulled out his saw.

He hacked it down, threw it over his shoulder, and the three of us hiked the mile back to his truck.

We loaded up our tree, and off we went!

The tree always, always looks smaller out in the forest than it is in real life.

After we Ryan pulled it from the back of his truck and carried it inside, we laughed at how ridiculously oversized it was, before cutting a few feet off the bottom of it and setting it up in its tree stand.

Then we spent the rest of the evening decorating.

Ryan threaded warm which lights throughout our tree’s branches while I made eggnog.

Then, we hung ornaments and listened to soft holiday jazz together until our tree was fully decked out in shimmering gold and red bulbs, along with the few ornaments I buy every year to commemorate my and Ryan’s travels together.

I love our little tree. Going out to cut it down is one of my favorite traditions we’ve started here in Flagstaff!

I’m excited to spend the rest of this month cozying up in our festive little living room.

Happy holidays!