OUR FINAL DESTINATION was the clear-cut just past the 8-mile marker up Wagner Creek Road. The pickup truck, now in low-gear 4×4, whined up the steepening dirt road where patches of ice lurked in the shadows of turns never touched by the day’s sun until finally there were other vehicles in the desolation of a million acres of trees under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management. I hoped we are on BLM land anyway because the tree-cutting permit I’d bought for $5 at the Bi-Mart in Ashland specified that we needed to be on BLM land and cut a tree that was a minimum of 100 feet from the road.

The parked vehicles were empty, abandoned by their occupants who were now firing guns into the forest. I saw the shooters in slow-motion as we drove past. To my left, was a man—bearded, mid-30s, white—putting an AR-15 to his right shoulder and then firing away in rapid succession out into the trees. To my right, was a man getting out of a Nissan Pathfinder. He had face-piercings and gauge-earrings. A holstered pistol clung to his hip. He smiled at me warmly and waived. I waived back.

We parked on the road alongside the clear-cut that fell gently down into the draw. There was still snow on the limbs of the Pine and Douglas Fir trees that sprung up out of the landscape where the clear-cut had been carried out some years ago. One of these replanted trees would be the tree we would cut down and haul home to decorate as our Christmas tree.

I grabbed the handsaw from the bed of the pickup truck and amidst the near-by gunfire, my wife, two daughters and I made the descent down into the draw to search for a potential Christmas tree.

“I don’t like the gunfire,” my oldest daughter said. She was in her second year of college and had just returned home for the holidays that morning. She wore a bright red jacket.

“I think I was Bambi in a former lifetime,” my younger daughter, 16, said. “Could they hit us from there?”

I considered lying, but opted for the truth, which had been my default modus operandi as a father.

“Yes, they could hit us from there, but they’re firing away from our location.”

“I wish you would have lied,” she said.

“We’ll be okay,” I said. Now I was sort of lying. I couldn’t guarantee any such thing.

“I found one!” my wife called from down at the bottom of the draw.

It wasn’t the perfect Christmas tree, but it would do. I cut it down with the saw and threw it over my shoulder.

“Do you need help?” my wife asked.

“No,” I said. The tree was heavy over my shoulder but the majority of its weight had settled comfortably between my shoulder blades. “Just lead the way back up to the truck.”

The gunfire intensified as we plodded uphill toward the truck. The draw sounded like a war zone.

I felt at peace climbing uphill with the heavy weight on back and the sound of gunfire echoing in the air.

The gunfire became muffled background noise and all I could hear was my breathing and feel the ground beneath each step.

Then there was a loud cannon-like boom. Were they firing a bazooka now?

I took another step. The scene felt familiar and as I slipped deeper into the deja vu, a voice inside my head, my voice but different somehow, said:

“Hang on Bob, we’re almost to the helicopter.”

We were close, real close, and everything was going to be okay.

I reached the top of the hill and threw the tree into the bed of the pickup truck. The gunfire had ceased and the forest, darkening now in the failing light of late afternoon, was silent again.

©Scott Dewing