Christmas Family Tradition

My Christmas Family Tradition
by: Cason Davenport

         One of our family traditions during Christmas time is going up to Cedar Mountain to find a Christmas tree the day before Thanksgiving. We've been doing this since my very first Christmas. We like to go the day before Thanksgiving because it isn't usually busy and we can spend the rest of the week spending time with our family.  Sometimes there's snow, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes we bring extended family members like my grandma or my cousins. We always come home with good trees and stories of the day.
         Before we leave we have to pack up our truck with our gear. We always pack the tree permits, the saw, jackets, a change of clothes, and sometimes we take 4-wheelers. When my Grandma comes she brings sandwiches and hot chocolate. We plan to stay up there the whole day and coming back before dark. We always come home pretty tired, but we look forward to it every year.
         Every year something crazy happens. Like this year, we almost ran out of gas. Usually, we go to Yankee Meadow but because of the Brianhead fire we took the back way up Cedar Mountain through Cedar Breaks instead. Since we went a different way, and my mom couldn't read the map, we almost ran out of gas. Last year, we had a huge group so we had 3 or 4 trucks. There was a ton of snow, and the roads were pretty covered. There was another truck ahead of us that was coming down the mountain. Because of the snow and ice and the steep hill, he was slipping down the road and almost knocked us off a cliff! If my Grandmas truck hadn't been where it was, the truck that hit it might have gone off itself. Every year is so fun on the day we go get a Christmas tree to see and play in the snow. We always look forward to the next year afterwards.