My husband is a bit of a traditionalist, especially at Christmas. He likes vintage ornaments, classic carols, and making the festive food he remembers from childhood. And this year, his passion for “Yules of Yore” meant he had a more “rugged” plan of procuring our Christmas tree: Heading into the snowy woods, armed with a saw and Christmas spirit to cut down our tree.

I had visions of re-creating the opening scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: Trudging through waist-deep snow with miserable kids and the wrong tools, returning home with a tree that not only didn’t fit, but was home to a rabid squirrel. In the end, the experience differed in some ways from that fateful movie moment… but in some ways, it was right on point. With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about cutting down your own tree in the bush….

Fun fact for you: You’re allowed to cut down a free tree (for the purpose of Christmas festivities, mind you) from Crown lands, BUT … you need a permit. Luckily, they are easy to download and print. We’ve made it super easy by attaching a PDF of the permit right in our site. Click HERE.

Trees can only be cut from designated areas, including hydro right-of-way, logging roads (within three metres/ten feet of the edge of the road), and open range lands. Don’t get sneaky and try to cut a tree down from private land, plantations, research areas, parks, or your neighbour’s yard, not matter now much you dislike said neighbour. Read more on restrictions and rules here.

Don’t be a Clark Griswold by leaving unprepared. Bring:

• Sturdy gloves (your hands will get impaled by twigs and whatnot).

• Rope.

• A tarp.

• A saw or sawzall. (at this point if, you get pulled over by police, you will look like a murderer)

• Good boots.

• Hot coffee, hot chocolate, or coffee and chocolate mixed together (aka a mocha).

• Non-grumpy children.

• Snacks to keep children from becoming grumpy.

• Your dog if she is good off-leash.

• Your dog even if she isn’t good off-leash because she’ll think it’s fun.

• Winter tires.

• Your permit.

• Some more snacks because your kids will eat the first batch on the ride up.

• Christmas carols (but not Mariah Carey – that will drive everyone nuts).

• Knowledge of the closest tree farm or Home Depot in case this all turns turns into a disaster (which it did for us. Read on).

• Mitts for your three year old because you know if you forget them she will just try to make snowballs with her bare hands.

• Patience.

• A sense of adventure.

Other pointers:

• You can cut down a maximum of three trees, but only for personal use.

• Cut your tree from dry, rocky sites or slopes, which produce better Christmas trees.

• Try to leave the bottom one or two branches on the stump of the tree, which may grow into another tree for future use.

• Do not cut a big tree only to use the top portion.

• Leave the area clean.

• Conservation officers are out, so carry your permit and follow the rules.

We started yelling at our children that it was time to go at 10 a.m. We pulled out of our driveway at 11 a.m., because it took us an hour to locate and throw into the car: Our dog, a leash, thermoses of hot beverages, snow pants for children, toques for children, appropriately water-proof hand protection for all (or so we thought), windshield wiper fluid, peanut butter and jam sandwiches that children insisted on bringing (and which they would eventually eat while sobbing because, apparently, they hate peanut butter and jam sandwiches), rope and scissors, a blanket because kids said the car was cold even though it wasn’t, Goldfish crackers, an orange (bad idea), apple sauce (worse idea). Then we had to get gas, a sawzall from a friend, Tim Horton’s because we didn’t want to drink our hot beverages yet, and… we were off like a herd of turtles.

We got to the turn-off to Telemark (in West Kelowna) at 1 p.m. I had visions of the sun setting while we were out there. (spoiler alert: it did).

We took a logging road up, up, up a mountain, driving slowly on the slippery, snowy, windy road while craning our necks for possible Perfect Christmas Tree Options along the side of the road (as that’s where we’re permitted to remove trees). Despite being in what I considered to be the middle of nowhere, there were a LOT of people out sledding, standing around bonfires, skeet shooting, toboganning while being pulled behind pick-up trucks, chasing their dogs down the road, and having middle-of-the-woods potlucks with crock pots plugged into generators.

WHERE. ARE. WE? (real quote, uttered several times)

The trouble with the logging road was that it was steep up a hill on one side, and steep down a hill on the other. What we needed was a wide open meadow where we could plop the kids down into the snow and trudge along until we stumbled upon a beauty.

Eventually we pulled over to the side of the road, bundled the mini ones up (our three year old did NOT, in the end, have mitts), and let the kids smack sticks against trees while Dylan and I shook snow off branches and remarked how all the trees looked like, well, giant Charlie Brown trees.

We eventually found one that checked off several boxes (ie appeared to be the right height; contained no visible squirrel; had an amount of branches; and was roughly 10 feet from the road) and I, who had long since resigned myself to the fact that we would need to abort on this whole plan and head straight to Grumpy’s tree farm, announced: “That’s the one! CUT IT DOWN WE’RE DONE HERE!”

Thank goodness for the sawzall.

Behold photographic evidence of our adventure…

We mounted it to the roof of the car while the kids danced around, spilling hot chocolate that they deemed “too hot” and “too sweet” and yet “too cool” and “not sweet enough.” We then descended back down the mountain, slowly, so as to avoid pick-up truck toboganners and wayward dogs. And then we were on the highway, going a painful 55 km/hr (sorry to anyone driving behind us) as my five year old watched the wind whip the branches on our tree through the sun roof, yelling: “ALL THE NEEDLES ARE FALLING OFF!!” and my husband implored me to go slower because THINK OF THE TREE! and rolled his window down, sticking his arm out to urge drivers behind us to pass.

By the time we got home and put the tree up in the stand, it had fallen to darkness (ie it was roughly 3:40 p.m.), and I took one look at our marvelous, carefully-selected family Christmas tree and announced: “I’m not putting lights on that thing. When does Home Depot close?”

The kids watched Christmas movies by the fire and I drank coffee at the kitchen island while my husband went back out into the cold to buy us a store tree that someone else had cut down for us, bless them.

We now have a beautiful non-Charlie Brown scraggle tree lit and decorated in our living room, and our hard-earned nature tree stands tall (actually, it doesn’t – it tipped over in the wind two days ago and I haven’t picked it back up) on our deck, overlooking our neighbourhood for all to enjoy, it too adorned with twinkling lights that may have broken when the tree fell in the wind. (Amendment to this story: Our indoor Home Depot tree also fell over, and I came home to smashed ornaments, water in every direction, and a guilty-looking dog. Learn from me: Get a good tree stand).

Our lesson for next year:

• Research better places to cut down trees

• Find somewhere open

• The logging road we used was not ideal

• You live and learn

Overall, it was a blast, and I can see how cutting down a Christmas tree might become a beloved family tradition. We didn’t knock it out of the park on our first year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.