Op-Ed: A crooked Christmas tree for a crooked year [Los Angeles Times]
Our Christmas tree has a knee. “A crooked tree for a crooked year” was my sales pitch when we spotted the bent ponderosa pine on the snowy downslope of Pike National Forest. First just my 6-year-old agreed, and then my wife, and finally my 9-year-old came on board. After we cut it, we found layers we certainly didn’t anticipate.
I’d taken the day off work so we could all drive half an hour northwest from our little town at the base of Pikes Peak up into the national forest to secure our tree. It’s a neat annual program run by the Forest Service that’s a fundraiser, family activity and fire reduction initiative all wrapped in one.
Our Christmas tree has a knee. “A crooked tree for a crooked year” was my sales pitch when we spotted the bent ponderosa pine on the snowy downslope of Pike National Forest. First just my 6-year-old agreed, and then my wife, and finally my 9-year-old came on board. After we cut it, we found layers we certainly didn’t anticipate.
I’d taken the day off work so we could all drive half an hour northwest from our little town at the base of Pikes Peak up into the national forest to secure our tree. It’s a neat annual program run by the Forest Service that’s a fundraiser, family activity and fire reduction initiative all wrapped in one.
10 merry happenings in Colorado s outdoors amid difficult year gazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver and Subject Matter Expert for Native American Related Records.
On November 14th, 1962, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (DRGRR) pulled two 53 foot flat cars, numbers 21025 and 2106, into Salida, Colorado. On hand were several U.S. Forest Service (USFS) officials as well as the DRGRR Vice President of Traffic, R.K. Bradford, all to oversee the loading of the VIP cargo – that year’s National Christmas Tree. It wasn’t an entirely smooth evolution. The tree was so massive that the bottom 15’ of branches wouldn’t fold and so they were cut off, to be reinserted when, after three more railroads and nearly 1800 miles of travel, the tree would arrive in the nation’s capital. A few days later, the forest supervisor wrote Colorado Senator Gordon Allott and sent along a San Isabel Forest hard hat joking “…as you may have heard some San Isabel trees get out of control at times.”
A group of hikers, Manitou Springs residents and Colorado Springs community members are banding together to clean up the forest by removing garbage and fire hazards from homeless encampments along the base of the mountains.
The group, Pikes Peak Clean Up Crew, formed on Facebook shortly after the Incline fire ignited in a homeless encampment between Barr Trail and The Manitou Incline in early October and burned several acres.
Trevor Becker, the creator of the Facebook group, lives near the Incline and was at home when he saw plumes of smoke billowing off the mountain.
“It was pretty scary,” Becker said. “And I have a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old and it really hit home. So that was really the motivation to go in there and remove those fire hazards.”