Step one: locate your warmest mitts n’ boots, not the fancy ones you wears to church, or the mitts that your nan made you with her only ball of hot pink yarn. Turpentine is unforgiving.
Step two: get the skidoo ready. Make sure you packs a weeks’ worth of pre-buttered bread, enough to feed two people on a 30 minute boil-up.
Step three: take the usual path – the one worn down by decades of use by the Poole’s and Browns and Chubbs’ and Curls and everyone before and in-between. Through Tub Harbour Pond, Fox Harbour Pond, Carbon Pond, Russell’s Pond, Blue Hill Pond, and all the while wonder who in d’Jesus named ‘em.
Step four: take a hard right. Up through them woods in Father’s old wood path lies the sexiest evergreen you ever laid your eyes on.
Step five: you found the tree. Examine to make sure it’s not two trees growing together and taking you for a fool (been there). Give’r a knock with the axe to dust off all the snow that would otherwise end up down your back. Cut down. Plop in the komatik box. Rejoice with a cup of Tetley and the aforementioned pre-buttered bread. Share with the Whisky Jacks, don’t be stingy.
Step six: have a few shots with the .22 to make sure you’re fit for partridge hunting later on. If you can’t hit a stump built into the ground, or the tin can on top of it, stay home out of it and buy chicken.
Step seven: haul ass back home. Thaw out before decorating. One night for sure.
Step eight: talk about how Christmas used to be at the supper table. Warm up the frostbitten cheeks you got on the drive back home (wind picked up and you forgot your neck warmer, stun).
Step nine: Move the tv to make way for the tree, make sure to place tv in full view of the kitchen table still because heaven help us if we misses the news or the Young and the Restless.
Step ten: decorate the tree before turning the string lights on (trust me). Make sure they works though. Add them crocheted ornaments from 1992, and the god forsaken silk apples that no one knows the origins of. Stand back and make sure all hands are paying attention when you plugs the lights in. Remark that it’s the nicest tree you had yet, just like you have every other year.
Bonus step: wait ‘til midnight when everyone’s toddled off to bed, come back out in the living room and turn the tree lights on again. Sit in silence and remember quietly all the times you’ve done this, and how much you’ll miss it when you can’t do it nomore. Be thankful for all the hardships and the merriment, and go on back to bed out of it feeling like maybe it all means something a little more because you’re home.
Love,
M.
Colour of Outdoors by Mandy Ford 