The returning runner…

Act 41 – The Christmas Tree

In trail running, you see beauty in nature, beauty in the weather, and sometimes in humanity. The Galena Creek trail is one of my favorite local “haunts” around Reno. It’s just 15 minutes from my house, has a nice tree canopy providing quite a bit of shade, and with a lovely creek running along the entire route provides wonderful scenery for me and a ready water supply for my dog. Each fall at nearly precisely the 1.5-mile mark, a perfect pine tree would be magically transformed into a Christmas tree. Ornaments would appear on the Christmas tree just after Thanksgiving. When I first saw the Christmas tree in full regalia it was probably around 5 feet tall. The ornaments would last until late spring, when they would vanish as magically as they had appeared. Over time, the tree grew taller, but the magical decorations continued for many years.

One time, as I ran my favorite trail, a young girl (perhaps in her late teens) seemed to loiter around the Christmas tree (although not decorated at the time). We engaged in conversation, and she told me that her and her father had been decorating the tree for several years. It was clearly a special memory for her. The decorating continued for a couple of years after that but then, sadly, stopped. Maybe the tree just got too tall to be practical (certainly a possibility as it now couldn’t be decorated even with a large ladder), maybe the now young woman had moved away, maybe something had happened to the father. I don’t know.

The thought of a father’s commitment to sharing a special time with his daughter makes me both somehow sad and somehow hopeful for us (people). I miss them. I miss the daughter and the father with a golden heart that I never met. Every time I reach the Christmas tree I think of them…

Photo: July 22, 2025 – The Galena Creek Christmas tree (now much too tall to decorate).