Fencerows: A Wreath of Christmas Memories
John Luthens
When I was young, my parents would pile me and my brother into the car and drive into the northern forests of Barron County to pick pine boughs for making Christmas wreaths. It was a seasonal ritual, running wild and free in the woods. The forest that we haunted stretched along a river bottom. There were stands of balsam to become lost in, beaver dams to cross, and grouse to shoot at. The smells of balsam and gunpowder can put any outdoorsman in the Christmas spirit.
We’d stay until the last rays of sunk sank low through the balsams, piling our hard-won pickings into the trunk. We’d detour through the sleepy streets of our small town to see the Christmas lights before rolling home, where the smell of grouse in a crock pot would mix with an assembly line of balsam-scented wreaths.
I’ve grown up now. I live a scant 20 minutes from the city limits of Milwaukee. There are far more Christmas lights than in the small town where I grew up, but there are also no wild grouse or rolling stands of balsam. For the most part, Christmas wreaths here come from the store. I was reminiscing and thinking these thoughts in early December when I came up with the perfect holiday solution.
The neighboring farmer has 60 acres of field and woods that separate my house from his. The highlight of his land is a stretching windbreak of Norway pines that separates a hay field from a corn field. It’s not exactly balsam wilderness, but I figured it was better than Christmas shopping for a wreath in the mall. I secured permission from my neighbor and set out to relive some Christmas memories.
The author, searching the fields of Grafton, Wisconsin for the perfect Christmas wreath.
My first stop was a tangle of wild grape vines that spreads like an impassable barrier on the hay-field side of the Norway pines. I cut a suitable vine for the ring of my wreath. There were still shriveled grapes on some of the branches. The sound of geese eating in the corn stubble on the other side of the trees grabbed my attention, so I crawled through the tangles on my belly to have a look.
There must have been one-hundred geese in the stubble. I stalked close enough to convince myself that I could have bagged a Christmas goose if I so desired. I would have probably missed. A dead raccoon was laying three rows into the corn stubble. I wouldn’t even be able to hit that; Not very Christmas-like imagery. I moved into the pines to secure my boughs.
I clipped enough branches to fill a small knapsack. I spread out my pruning enough, until I felt it would take a seasoned tracker to tell I had passed through the pines at all. I picked up two pine cones for decoration and stood looking across the fields. A hawk screeched, and I stood still and listened. I finally saw him perched in an oak tree across the way. He soared away over the field and I turned for home.
Final wreath preparations.
Every wreath needs a final touch – some lights or maybe a bow. I was working my way through a final thicket when I found the perfect finish. There was a pile of tail feathers scattered along a fallen log. It looked to me like there would be one less goose eating amongst the farmer’s corn stubble. I was pondering whether it was a coyote or a fox that had committed the Christmas murder when a flash of white amongst the feathers caught my eye. Shining like a Christmas star, amidst the feathers, was the half-shed of a spike buck.
What a find! The antler had only been partially chewed by a field mouse, too. I grabbed the spike and a handful of feathers, and with a pack of pine boughs in tow, I headed to my Christmas workshop.
I doused the grape vine in water and bent it into a circle. I wanted the wreath to be 100 percent organic, but I needed to tie the boughs around the grape vine with something. I debated running back to the field and stealing a strand of the farmer’s barbed wire, but I was afraid that Sana would look ill on my thieving and not bring me a new fly rod for Christmas. I settled for using some braided tip-up line. By the time the lakes freeze up for ice fishing this year, Santa might well have come and gone, so I figured I might as well put some new line on my wish list too.
The finished product.
When I was young, I remember that the best part of wreath making was always the adventure involved in picking the boughs. The wreath making itself tended to be monotonous, not to mention hard on the fingers. I have to say though, now that I’ve grown up, the actual assembly was kind of fun too. A couple of pine cones, a few feathers and a deer antler. The wreath looks sharp on the front door. My wife is really going to get into the Christmas spirit when she sees it.
Editor’s note: The wreath gets to stay, but she was unseasonably adamant that the feathers and the antler had to go. Bah Humbug.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com