My breath came out in crystalline clouds that soon ghosted into nothingness, the only sign of movement in these trees. The only sounds belonged to me as a boot scrunched the snow down. This brought back memories.My dad, brother, and I would come out to a forest similar to this one, always a couple of weeks out from Christmas, and pick out a tree. Each swing of the axe brought a fresh pine smell, and shook loose a dusting of snow with each reverberation.
I didn't have an axe with me, today. Instead I just enjoyed the sight of the trees covered in their winter finery despite my nose and ears burning with the cold.
These were not the pines of Christmas trees. The tall Ponderosas started their branches too high up, but they still looked beautiful. More than that, they left a space down below. I settled in, putting my back to the tree's trunk, sitting on frozen ground covered in brown pine needles, but shielded from the snow by the branches above.
The trees were still silent, making it all the easier to think back of outings to find a Christmas tree with dad. Memories of singing songs about Rudolph, jingling bells, Batman smells, and still more. Snowball fights where we shielded ourselves behind trees and the car, my brother and I straddling the trunk of the tree we felled like cowboys as dad towed the tree to the car with the snowmobile, the car ride home where we drank loads of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows from dad's Thermos.