Noz Nozawa on the Art of Cutting Down Your Own Christmas Tree
Chainsaw Mary weighs in on the practice of finding, and cutting down, a Christmas tree in a real forest.
As a youngster growing up in the suburbs of Charlotte, the holiday movies I watched often presented a bemusing scenario: families cutting down their own Christmas trees. I was a kid raised on tree lots, where inventory was culled from farms two hours west in the Appalachian Mountains. The idea of getting hands-on with a fir and then dragging it away seemed like something that couldn’t possibly happen in real life in the ’90s, like a school food fight. Maybe it was something my mother or grandmother did, but for me? We got our trees pre-processed, thank you very much.
I grew up with Fraser firs, which I am now learning are the “Cadillacs” of Christmas trees. But I never thought much about what it took to get those trees to me: the years spent cultivating them in tidy rows, the labor of the workers who cut them down and trimmed them into neat cones. So when I found out that my friend Noz Nozawa—an interior designer based in San Francisco—harvests her own tree from the woods of Lake Tahoe every year, I had to learn more. As it turns out, the initiative is one the Tahoe National Forest HQ runs in an effort to support ecosystem health. (Little trees sap resources from the big ones, and also put forests at greater risk for wildfires.)
For $10 and a decent amount of sweat, you too can bring home a Tahoe tree you cut down yourself. But you might need to learn to love the “skinty” tree, as Noz calls it, because the full, healthy-looking ones are off-limits. Before you embark on your mission, read through her advice for the equipment to bring, the trees to look out for, and the extra care you’ll need to give a wild-caught varietal.
I love the fact that you cut down your own tree—I don’t know anyone else who does that.
I don’t either. I mean, I know there are others, because I see them when we’re out, but same.
Where do you guys go to find the tree? Is it your own property in Tahoe? Or are there designated tree-cutting areas where you’re going?
Theoretically, we do have some eligible trees on the property, but we’d have to cultivate it—and then it doesn’t actually do the cute thing that the whole Tahoe Christmas tree program is for, which is to help with forest overcrowding. That overcrowding leads to dead brush when there are drought years.
There are different zones throughout Tahoe. It’s about 75 miles all the way around, so it’s a fairly large region. You go to one of the permit offices—ours is on the north side. You buy a permit. You can also just buy it online, and it’s $10. We always just get one. There are designated parts of the forest every year that you are allowed to harvest from, and you have to go to those specific areas. They’re easy enough to access from roads or neighborhood streets. And then you hike in with either your saw or your chainsaw, and you go look for a tree.
There are rules that you have to follow in terms of not chopping down a “good” tree. You can only chop down messed-up trees.
OK, so what makes a “good” tree?
A “good” tree means that it will be viable as a tree in the forest. And you shouldn’t take that—even though it’s tempting, because they are the more beautiful trees, generally. A “good” tree means that it’s out on its own without being directly underneath or next to a more mature one. When trees are clustered together, there’s a very good chance that they’re competing for limited resources. In a drought year, a bunch of those will die off and then become fodder for forest fires.
Mature trees will continue to take the resources, primarily. It’s the trees that are growing out sideways, or only have sunlight on one side—so it’s naked on the backside—those are the trees that you look for, and you try to get the best one you can out of those circumstances.
There are other rules, too. Like, if the diameter of the trunk is greater than six inches, you can’t have it. That’s a ton of trees. It sounds big, because when you go to a tree farm or you get a Christmas tree from a lot, they’re perfect—they’re fat and chunky at the base. That is not how natural trees grow in the forest. When they grow and compete for sunlight, they shoot straight up. By the time you have a 15-foot-tall tree—which is usually what we look for—the trunk is still only four inches around at the base. It’s crazy narrow.
Ultimately, it’s all honor system, but I’ve never seen anyone violate the rules.
You’ve been doing this since 2009, but really regularly since 2018. What mistakes have you made and learned from doing it so many times? And what kind of gear does it take?
Oh, we’ve screwed up so many times. So, the things to know: Always bring a handsaw and a pre-charged electric chainsaw. It’s my favorite time of the year to break out Chainsaw Mary, my personality when I’m around power tools. It’s a scary time to be around—I don’t know how to use half of the shit.
We bring stuff that’s waterproof, because it’s snowing a lot of the time. You put on what you would wear to do snow sports—big gloves, goggles to protect your eyes from wood chips. We’ll bring a waterproof tarp for two reasons: 1) to protect the top of the car; 2) to make it easier to drag the tree out in particularly dirty conditions.
The nicer the tree, the heavier it is. So if it’s got a thicker trunk, when you’re cutting it down, you have to hit it all the way at the bottom. You can’t cheat. You’re not meant to leave a big stump, because that’s ugly and it makes it harder for the trunk to re-enter the ground through decay.
One of the things I’ve learned is how to spot a Christmas tree in the forest—it’s a special talent. Our trees end up being between 12 and 13 feet every year. They’re really big trees, but they’re sparse. It’s not a noble fir—one of those tree farm abominations that look like conical bushes, where you can’t even see the trunk. And it might have a flat or empty patch in the back. That’s OK, we just push it up against a window. In the forest, you’re looking for something that’s about 270 degrees of tree, maybe less—240, even.
Finally: These wild trees can be very skinty and thin at the bottom, so be prepared for standard tree bases to not fit very well when you put the screw pins in. I’ve had trees come home that were two-and-a-half inches in diameter and 12 feet tall! You have to roll with it.
Have you found a good fix for that?
I use other parts of the tree trunk. Cut some discs off the bottom of the trunk and then use them to brace it. I should also note that there’s a lot of trimming you’ll need to do—like, we always talk about “trimming the tree” as a tradition, but when you buy a tree, they’re pre-trimmed.
Once the tree is in the house, I do a lot of shaping around the bottom boughs. You sculpt it in the way you would any other houseplant. And by the way, these wild trees need a lot more water than you think—they are thirsty! You’ll have to refill the water about five times as much as you would a farmed tree.
OK, you’ve got the tree inside, it’s trimmed—now what? How do you decorate yours?
It is pure electric nostalgia. That is the entire theme. I do not do chic Christmas.
The version of Christmas that I hold dear is the one that I grew up with as a child. That was the era of the ’80s, when everyone was all about the mercury-ball Christmas ornaments, primary colors, and wooden German ornaments. I have all of the ornaments that I grew up with, including the mall-kiosk, 1990s-era, claymation-looking ones with everyone’s names. We still decorate with all of those ornaments, plus some from my husband’s childhood.
We use C9 bulbs, incandescent only, which is terrifying in a fire area. But I also know people who still use candles—so I am doing safer than that, at least.
I don’t believe in LED Christmas. It actually makes me want to die inside when I see it. I don’t know how they have not figured out incandescent blue in LED technology. Until they figure that out, and until I can no longer purchase these light bulbs, we’re using incandescent C9 Christmas tree bulbs as if it were 1988.
Do you do anything special with your tree once the season is over?
I defenestrate my tree every year—it’s been a tradition since 2010. In Tahoe, I’ll take the tree out the front sliding door and then throw it over the balcony as far as it can go. ⌂
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Brilliant piece. The Tahoe program turning forest management into a holiday tradition is way smarter than most people realize. I've done some trail work in overgrown forests, and thinning out those competing saplings really does reduce fire risk. The honor system part fascinates me tho, relying on people to only take the scraggly trees when there's beautful ones right there. Guess thats the whole point of making it about ecosystem health, not just cheap trees.