It was on my snowshoe tour. I was slowly heading for the parking lot, when I heard voices and some noise in the woods on the mountain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Suddenly I saw them: a man and a woman standing in the snow next to some fir trees. And before I could even say hallo the woman yelled: "We have a license by the forest ranger! It's in my pocket!"
It took me some seconds to understand what was going on. The couple was about to harvest a Christmas tree. The man held a saw in his hands, while his wife stood some meters ago, telling him what to do.
I assured them, that I believed that everything was completely legal. And so we started a chat. It's a decades long tradition for them to pick the Christmas tree.
Whilst the man worked, the woman told me a little story about two trees standing close to each other in a forest:
The one tree was very majestic, beautifully shaped, without gaps. The other tree was buckled and a bit aslope.
And the handsome tree always bad-mouthed his poor neighbor. "I'm so perfect, I'm so beautiful. And you are just disgustingly ugly."
One day a ranger came along and chopped down the boastful tree for Christmas. The second one was spared and lived a long an happy tree life for centuries. 🙂
As the short story ended, their "timber" fell. We wished each other merry Christmas and parted. Such a lovely encounter at the end of my hike.
And I wish all of you just the same: Happy holidays, nice presents, some rest and simply a great time! ❤️
