My dad cut down that tree

I was walking to class last Friday when I saw a semi-truck parked outside of the School of Business Administration building with a giant tree on the back of it. There were lots of people gathered around it, which I thought was curious, since it was a tree on the back of a truck which didn't look to be moving any time soon. It didn't immediately click with me that this was the tree, you know, the giant one that goes in Pioneer Courthouse Square every year.

In fact, I didn't realize it was the tree for a couple of days. I was talking to my mother on the phone and she mentioned that my father had once again, for the nth year in a row, cut down the tree. You see, my father works for Stimson Lumber Company, the company that donates the tree every year. When two and two finally made four in my head, it seemed cosmically strange that my father cut down the tree in rural Oregon on Friday and within hours it ended up outside the classroom I was sitting in. I've long enjoyed the fact that the tree is a product of my father's labor, but I've rarely enjoyed the tree as the tree, in all its holiday glory in the square. I think this year I will make a point to do so.