I was raised in bush country more often then not in Alberta, and I swear my folks either breed in or created a love of the bush from a young age.. It most likely helped that for a good number of years, going to bush country when I was little meant family, and then when we were a little more settled it meant times visiting dad at bush camps in the summer or going camping and spending time in the bush as a family. O those trips out to the little red are without a doubt some of my favorite pre-teen memory’s.

So when I moved to yellowknife, it had a feeling of coming home to me, lakes, bush and big sky with those amazing northern lights, black bears, and cold water fishing, many a time spent in canoe or out camping, traveling back gravel roads, waterfalls and old bush cabins, it was a time and a place that fit my soul in a way that is hard to express properly..

When we moved to Iqaluit, Nunvut, it hit me as having a wild, open, strking and hard beauty, the wind that smells of salt, that sings and sigh’s in a never! ending story, the rolling hills to the one side of the our little “city”, the never ending rivers, and the tiny secret spots of plant life and growths tucked into nocks, the winding circles of willow growing just a few inches off the ground, in a three foot circle that will take a hundred plus years to do so, the sudden flush of grows and colors that show where a cariboo was taken, and its parts left creating a micro climate, even a shed antler was enough to create a mini land of its own.

There were a few things missing, the ability to drive, It is very different to live in a flyin-flyout town,  the sound of birds in winter, I made friends with the ravens, my favorite was a called Kurr-Plunk,  he was a old raven and very smart, he had learned to make the sound of a rock falling and hitting water.. how many time must he have played that game to have learned to make the sound.. but what made my heart whine just a bit was the lack of tree’s.. 

The beauty of a spruce drizzled with a dusting of white snow, I finally broke down and bought and shipped six fake tree’s to us, and I put them into a tree row in my backyard so that nine months of the year when I looked out my kitchen window, I could see “MY” tree’s

One of my favorite northern christmas books is called Baseball Bats for Christmas, tells the story of the children of Repulse Bay who are bewildered when pilot Rocky Parsons leaves six spindly pine trees outside the Hudson’s Bay Company store on Christmas Eve of 1955.  Having never seen tree’s before, they are unsure what to do with them, but they figure out that they can use them as baseball bats, and then the story becomes a touching story of best friends and how they come together

Its that time of the year where many of us will be setting up our tree’s and trimming them, may we all remember that this time is about our grace, rebirth, love, friendship, family, and time spent together

Do you put up a tree and if so, when do you do so, and what are your traditions around it?