During the holiday season, the Governor’s Mansion in Juneau is decorated with a tree from the Tongass National Forest. Each year, the community that provides the tree rotates. This year, it was Ketchikan’s turn.
We’re hiking toward Silvis Lake. There are 8 members of the US Forest Service, two reporters, and one pastor. Ketchikan is on the other side of the mountains.
We come up over a ridge and there, across the muskeg, was a 16-foot tall, majestic bull pine.
This pine is about to become part of an annual tradition. It’s called the “Together Tree,” and it’s a collaboration between many of the communities in Southeast. The Forest Service sends the tree with the help of the Coast Guard to the state’s capital where it will stand on the verandah of the Governor’s mansion, wreathed in ornaments and twinkling lights.
The ornaments are also provided by communities in Southeast. This year’s ornaments were made by Mrs. Kimball and Mrs. Gibson’s fifth graders at Pioneer Home Indian Education Pre-School and Houghtaling Elementary School in Ketchikan.
Nathan Mooers, a Forest Service ranger, says he’s been scouting out this tree since he heard that Ketchikan would be providing this year’s Together Tree. The last time Ketchikan was tapped for the tradition was 2019.
“This is our tree!” Mooers announces, “When it gets to Juneau, they can take off a foot or two so it can start sucking up water again.”
Mooers unshoulders his chainsaw.
Ken Truitt of the Alaska Native Cape Fox Corporation steps up first. Somewhere below, a creek is rushing. He pulls out a bible.
“Our people come from the Tongass Tribe, the Tongass National Forest,” says Truitt. “We tell our people, our young ones, that the sea is our pantry. But this is where we get our meat from. If we look around, we’re surrounded by evergreen, Evergreen is everlasting. It’s always there, never going to die. So, I thought about, we’re getting ready to cut down a tree that Mother Earth has provided us with.”
“This tree is going to go to the governor, am I correct?” Truitt asks after thanking the Forest Service rangers standing around him. “So, my prayer is that this tree – once it goes into the Governor’s Mansion – may the fragrance come out of that tree, that anytime anybody walks by it, they can smell it. And they can know that it came from this forest. If it’s decorated, may each one of those decorations means something to each one of those that might have put something under there.”
Later, Truitt says this was a new experience for him. He says he’s done many blessings but not for a tree.
After the tree has been blessed, Mooers and Meghan Smith, another ranger, pick up chainsaws and get to work.
It takes six people to carry the pine down the muddy slope. As it is being loaded into the Forest Service truck, the falling rain begins to mix with snow. As if the weather itself is trying to get into the holiday spirit.
After that, it is driven down to the Coast Guard base. The Coast Guard cutter Anthony Pettit is headed to Juneau on routine operations. As is tradition, they offered to take the tree with them.
This year’s Together Tree is hauled up on chains by the Anthony Pettit’s hydraulic winch. The Forest Service and Coast Guard personnel huddle together in the cold rain and snow and watch as the tree above their heads moves from land to water and is lowered into the cutter’s hold.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that this year’s Together Tree was a Sitka spruce. It is in fact, a lodgepole pine, otherwise known as a “bull pine.”
