That other outdoor writer named Tom recommends driving 400 miles round trip to cut a Christmas tree in a national forest to save the $50-$100 they’re charging in local lots. The Chron must let him expense all the fill-ups in his SUV.
I can’t help thinking that if you hold trees in any regard, you’re doing nature a favor by acquiring one that’s already dead.
Of course it could be a great family outing, providing, say, a winter storm doesn’t blow through and strand you in the middle of nowhere.
Wow. That’s all I can say. Wow.
To be fair, Tom never says that the reason to cut a tree in a national forest is to save money. He says that compared to other prices, the $10 can look pretty good as well as provide an adventure, but he does point out the problems with trying to find a decent tree this way.
But if you are going to say he “recommends” something, what he really seems to recommend is in the main article, not the sidebar you focus on. The main article advocates going to a choose-and-cut tree farm and combining it with a walk/hike or bike ride, which just involves going to a choose-and-cut tree farm in the Bay Area near a good outdoor destination, a kill two birds with one stone deal (and going to a national forest makes no sense unless you do a two birds with one stone deal, too, or unless you live really near one, and some of Tom’s readers do live near national forests).
You think you’re doing nature a favor by getting a tree that’s already dead as opposed to cutting down a live tree. Two problems with this. First, if you ask the Forest Service people up at Tahoe, however, they will tell you that you’re doing the forest a favor by cutting down some of the trees they permit for, decreasing fire danger. Second, the tree that’s “already dead” is dead because the number of trees that are cut each year is based on anticipated demand. If you stop buying dead trees, they will stop cutting them down, and worse yet, stop the serious environmental impact of trucking a lot of trees down from Oregon. To suggest that buying a dead tree is better than cutting a live one is to oversimplify and to ignore the real world issues involved.
Although the issue of which holiday tree option is most environmentally friendly is a complicated one, but the general consensus seems to be that the choose-and-cut local farm is best (with environmentally disposal), unless you happen to be near a national forest which needs removal of some smaller trees for fire management, in which case that is probably the best option. I have yet to see anyone who thinks that buying a dead tree is the best option for the environment.
I think it would have been helpful if Tom went into more details in his sidebar, but it was a sidebar, his main concept was the combination of a hike or bike with a local choose-and-cut tree farm.