Most of you have probably already figured out what I’m about to tell you, or you get your Christmas tree from a lot, or Heaven forbid, you have an artificial one. But for those of you like my family, who like to get the whole crew together and go out in the forest and cut down your own tree, you might be still working on getting your tree procured.
For the last couple of years, putting it off until now might have been a problem. The Forest Service, at least in some of Wyomings districts, wasn’t selling permits online. You had to go to the district office to get them. If you didn’t live where the district office was, you had to take a day off work to get the tree tag. But this year, they’re selling them online at Recreation.gov. It makes getting the permit a whole lot easier. And the BLM is selling permits for trees on BLM land online, too.
So what used to be the hardest part of getting a tree is now the easiest. Just get your permit online, then go get one. At the risk of sounding sappy, and sorry for the pun, It’s a great way to spend some quality time with the family to kick off the holidays. Another benefit is that cutting a tree from the forest can help with forest health. It’s a small thing, but every little bit helps. Taking a tree out helps others get more light and grow better.
We should probably start trying to get our tree right after Thanksgiving, when we have the whole family together for that holiday. But we do worry about it drying out, so we usually wait until a couple weeks before Christmas. I suppose that’s a good argument for an artificial tree, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. We’ll keep going to the forest to get our own tree. Many thanks to the Forest Service and BLM for getting their permits online.
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