Chop Local
A lot of precut Christmas trees are trucked to Colorado from Michigan, Oregon, Washington and North Carolina, and cost an arm and a leg. I decided to cut my own. WRITTEN and ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE
FOR THE PAST YEAR I’ve been a contributing columnist/cartoonist to the Colorado Sun, a big-deal journalism startup in my adoptive home state. Right; I sneaked in the door when nobody was looking. Now they’ll never get me out, no matter how many times they call pest control. Here’s my latest, where I walk into a forest, armed to the teeth, and commit arborcide. It wasn’t pretty. But it was sawdusty, so it was easy to clean up.
According to a random guy on a random Christmas Tree lot, the price of Christmas trees is up 5% to 10% this year. Just like everything else. And if you’re lucky enough to have a cathedral ceiling in your living room, you’ll pay dearly for a tall one:
“The market is pretty competitive,” the random guy told CBS Colorado. “The bigger trees have gone up, especially the 10-footers and up because there’s a severe shortage of those. You’re going to be paying more if you can even find them.”
The state’s Forest Service is stepping in again to fill the greenery gap. Yuletide skinflints can buy permits ($5-$20) to cut trees in specific ranger districts of the Arapaho and Roosevelt, Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison, Pike and San Isabel, Rio Grande, San Juan and White River national forests on a B.Y.O.S(aw) basis. You’ll hike to find your tree, kneel in the snow to cut it, muscle it out of the forest yourself, and then tie it onto the roof of your car. Good luck with the drive home!
Still want to cut your own? Consider these Christmas-timely warnings, all ye sawyers.
Go ahead, shop the lots. You’ll learn that money does grow on trees.
There are lots of trees near Boulder. And lots of creatures that live in those trees.
Ironically, the place with the most trees is off limits.
Red Feather Lakes is another option.
Wait, there’s more! For more of my tree-murder humor from The Sun, saw here!
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Nice John Prine quote, Peter!
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Santa, eggnog, and you!