The Lone Pine

was the biggest Christmas tree I ever saw

When I was a kid, I saw what I believed to be the biggest Christmas tree in the whole wide world while visiting Mom’s relatives in northern Minnesota in the 1960s.

[Warroad Chamber of Commerce]

The Minnesota State Highway Department had spared “The Lone Pine” in 1933 — at the start of the Great Depression and three years before my mother was born — when construction began on Highway 11 between Warroad and Roseau, the county seat. Local residents had rallied to save this local landmark. You could see the tree from miles away. Driving toward it, you were certain it was smack in the center of the road.

It’s hard for me to fathom the size of the old-growth forests my great-grandparents found near Lake of the Woods when they arrived in 1903. Nor can I imagine how they cut these tall timbers and logged them out of the woods with oxen.

This single simple pine stood to tell a story about this place. A monument to the past.

In 1970, someone vandalized the tree and it had to be taken down. The 80-foot tall Norway pine was estimated then to be 140 years old. That was a couple years after Kakaygeesick died. When he was born, that tree was already 14 years old. When my mother was born, it was already a century old. I remain awed by “The Lone Pine.”

This is the time of year when I find the spirit of the season deep in the woods.