Christmas in the Yukon

A Yukon Christmas

It is Christmas time in the Yukon. This is a time of sparkly snow, cozy fireplaces, skiing, and northern lights. It is also a time of bundling up to the nines for a trip to town, and eighteen hours of darkness per day.

Christmas lights can make the long darkness feel more like a cozy time instead of a desolate time. You may have heard of the Danish term hygge, which is a way of living that focuses on the simple things, coziness, and contentment. It does seem very hygge to bundle up, go find and chop down a Christmas tree, and decorate it next to a fire (or space heater, in our case).

I grew up with only artificial trees. You could always depend on them having the same perfect shape year after year. But now that I live in a place with millions of evergreens in every direction, the true Yukoner thing to do is to go out and find a real tree. Not at a Christmas tree farm, not at Canadian Tire, but in the actual woods. Just like the olden days.

The True Yukon Christmas Tree Experience

So, the other day, my husband and I ventured into the local wilderness in pursuit of a Christmas tree. We brought with us one ax, one saw, and one dog.

Shadow the dog is still a very young dog. He was so thrilled to be taken out to the wilderness that he promptly ran away. We figured we would catch up with him later.

We were surrounded by spruce trees, but most of them towered to the heavens at roughly 50 feet tall. Wandering further in, the ground became more and more covered with shrubs and tree stumps. Some of the trees were about fifteen feet tall, so I started gazing toward the tops of the trees to see if we could just chop off the top half of one.

Hygge in Question

While I was walking and looking up at treetops, my foot got caught on a tree root, sending me crashing to the ground. I somehow twisted during my fall so that I fell forward but landed on my back. As my luck would have it, I landed directly on a thick, spiky root that was sticking straight up from the ground. So much for hygge.

I lay on the ground moaning in agony for several minutes, afraid to look at my leg, where I had surely been impaled. Thankfully, my many layers of pants saved the day. Also thankfully, I was not carrying the ax at this time. Now I have the largest, most prominent and most circular bruise of my life, but at least I don’t have a tree sticking out of my leg! If you visit the Yukon, people will tell you to dress in layers, but what they won’t tell you the reason why – to save you from possible impalement.

Success at Last

After the pain subsided from that dramatic episode, we found a rather perfect top half of a tree. (Disclaimer: the bottom half will continue to grow). Jeremy had to lift the saw above his head to cut it down. Shadow came sprinting back to us with great gusto and quickly became more interested in the ax than the tree.

As we hauled the tree away, the sap was so sticky that my mitten became quite literally glued to the tree. I never expected to have such close and personal experiences with trees that day, but Jeremy helped to pry me off.

We set our tree up in our living room after hacking off the bottom bit. Turns out the tree was a lot taller than we thought. We covered it in lights and even made a cute homemade garland for it, thus restoring hygge to the atmosphere. Now we can gaze upon our tree and remember with moderate fondness the adventures we had in finding it.

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