Over the years, preceding holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have shared seasonal stories that have moved me in a profoundly. This week, as we continue our Advent journey, I wanted to open my calendar of yuletide stories with this wonderful tale penned by Mary Austin. It’s somewhat lengthy, but well worth the read.
Eastward from the Sierras rises a strong red hill known as Pine Mountain, though the Indians call it The Hill of Summer Snow. At its foot stands a town of a hundred board houses, given over wholly to the business of mining. The noise of it goes on by day and night—the creak of the windlasses, the growl of the stamps in the mill, the clank of the cars running down to the dump, and from the open doors of the drinking saloons, great gusts of laughter and the sound of singing. Billows of smoke roll up from the tall stacks and by night are lit ruddily by the smelter fires all going at a roaring blast.
Whenever the charcoal-burner’s son looked down on the red smoke, the glare, and the hot breath of the furnaces, it seemed to him like an exhalation from the wickedness that went on continually in the town; though all he knew of wickedness was the word, a rumor from passers-by, and a kind of childish fear. The charcoal-burner’s cabin stood in the spur of Pine Mountain two thousand feet above the town, and sometimes the boy went down to it on the back of the laden burros when his father carried charcoal to the furnaces. All else that he knew were the wild creatures of the mountain, the trees, the storms, the small flowering things, and away at the back of his heart a pale memory of his mother like the faint forest odor that clung to the black embers of the pine. They had lived in the town when the mother was alive, and the father worked in the mines. There were few women or children in the town at that time, but mining men jostling with rude quick ways, and the young mother was not happy.
“Never let my boy grow up in such a place,” she said as she lay dying; and when they had buried her in the coarse shallow soil, her husband looked for comfort up toward The Hill of Summer Snow shining purely, clear white and quiet in the sun. It swam in the upper air above the sooty reek of the town and seemed as if it called. Then he took the young child up to the mountains, built a cabin under the tamarack pines, and a pit for burning charcoal for the furnace fires.
No one could wish for a better place for a boy to grow up in than the slope of Pine Mountain. There was the drip of the pine balm and a wind like wine, white water in the springs, and as much room for roaming as one desired. The charcoal-burner’s son chose to go far, coming back with sheaves of strange bloom from the edge of snowbanks on the high ridges, bright spar or peacock-painted ores, hatsful of berries, or strings of shining trout. He played away whole mornings in glacier meadows where he heard the eagle scream; walking sometimes in a mist of cloud, he came upon deer feeding, or waked them from their lair in the deep fern. On snowshoes in winter, he went over the deep drifts and spied among the pine tops on the sparrows, the grouse, and the chilly robins wintering under the green tents. The deep snow lifted him up and held him among the second stories of the trees. But that was not until he was a great lad, straight and springy as a young fir. As a little fellow he spent his days at the end of a long rope staked to a pine just out of reach of the choppers and the charcoal pits. When he was able to go out alone, his father made him give three promises: never to follow a bear’s trail, never to try to climb the eagle rocks after young eagles, never to lie down nor to sleep on the sunny, south slope where the rattlesnakes frequented. After that he was free of the whole wood.
When Mathew, for so the boy was called, was ten years old, he began to be of use around the charcoal-pits, to mark the trees for cutting, to sack the coals, to keep the house and cook his father’s meals. He had no companions of his own age nor wanted any, for at this time he loved the silver firs. A group of them grew in a swale below the cabin, tall and fine; the earth under them was slippery and brown with needles. Where they stood close together with overlapping boughs the light among the tops was golden green, but between the naked boles it was a vapor thin and blue. These were the old trees that had wagged their tops together for three hundred years. Around them stood a ring of saplings and seedlings scattered there by the parent firs, and a little apart from these was the one that Mathew loved. It was slender of trunk and silvery white, the branches spread out fanwise to the outline of a perfect spire. In the spring, when the young growth covered it as with a gossamer web, it gave out a pleasant odor, and it was to him like the memory of what his mother had been. Then he garlanded it with flowers and hung streamers of white clematis all heavy with bloom upon its boughs. He brought it berries in cups of bark and sweet water from the spring; always as long as he knew it, it seemed to him that the fir tree had a soul.
Mathew told it all his thoughts. When at times there was a heaviness in his breast which was really a longing for his mother, though he did not understand it, he would part the low spreading branches and creep up to the slender trunk of the fir. Then he would put his arms around it and be quiet for a long, beautiful time. The tree had its own way of comforting him; the branches swept the ground and shut him in dark and close. He made a little cairn of stones under it and kept his treasures there.
Often as he sat snuggled up to the heart of the tree, the boy would slip his hand over the smooth intervals between the whorls and the boughs and wondered how they knew the way to grow. All the fir trees are alike in this, that they grow out their branches from the main stem like the rays of a star, one added to another with the season’s growth. They stand out stiffly from the trunk, and the shape of each new bough in the beginning and the shape of the last growing twig when they have spread out broadly with many branchlets, bending with the weight of their own needles, is the shape of a cross; and the topmost sprig that rises above all the star-built whorls is a long and slender cross, until by the springing of new branches it becomes a star. So, the two forms go on running into and repeating each other, and each star is like all the stars, and every bough is another’s twin. It is in this trim and certain growth that sets out the fir from all the mountain trees and gives to the young saplings a secret look as they stand straight and stiffly among the wild brambles on the hill. For the wood delights to grow abroad all points, and one might search a summer long without finding two leaves of the oak alike, or nay two trumpets of the spangled mimulus. So, as at that time he had nothing better worth studying about, Mathew noticed and pondered the secret of the silver fir and grew up with it until he was twelve years old and tall and strong for his age. By this time his father began to be troubled about Mathew’s schooling.
Meantime there was rioting and noise and coming and going of strangers in the town at the foot of Pine Mountain, and the furnace blast went on ruddily and smokily. Because of things he heard Mathew remained afraid of the town, and on rare occasions when he went down to it, he sat quietly among the charcoal sacks and would not go far away from them except when he held his father’s hand. But as the years passed, it seemed life went more quietly there, flowers began to grow in the yards of houses, and they met children walking in the streets with books upon their arms.
“Where are they going, Father?”
“To school,” replied the charcoal-burner.
“And may I go?” asked Mathew.
“Not yet, my son.”
One day his father pointed out the foundations of a new building going up in town.
“It’s a church,” he said, “and when that is finished it will be a sign that there will be women here like your mother, and then you may go to school.”
Mathew ran and told the fir tree all about it.
“But I will never forget you, never,” he cried, and he kissed the trunk.
Day by day, from the spur of the mountain, he watched the church being built. It was wonderful how much he could see in that clear, thin atmosphere; no other building in town interested him so much. He watched the walls go up and the roof and the spire rise skyward with something that glittered twinkling on its top. Then they painted the church white and hung a bell in the tower. Mathew fancied he could hear it on Sundays as he saw the people moving along like specks moving to their new place of worship.
“Next week,” said the father, “the school begins, and it is time for you to go as I promised. I will come and see you once a month, and when the term is over you shall return to our mountain.”
Mathew said good-bye to the fir tree, and there were tears in his eyes though he was happy. “I shall think of you very often,” he said, “and wonder how you are getting along. When I come back, I will tell you everything that happened. I will go to church, and I am sure I will like that. It has a cross on top like yours, only it is yellow and shines. Perhaps while I am gone, I shall learn why you carry a cross, also.” Then he timidly left his home, holding fast to his father’s hand.
There were now so many people in the town that it was quite as strange and fearful for Mathew as it would be for someone who grew up in town being left alone in the dense forest. At night, when Mathew’s gaze turned homeward, he could make out the charcoal fires of his father’s charcoal pits glowing like floating dots as the bulk of his mountain melted into the dark. He would cry a little under his blanket, but after he began to learn, there was no more occasion for crying. It was to Mathew as though there had been a candle lighted in a dark room. On Sunday he went to church, and then it was both light and music, for he heard the minister read about God in the great book and he believed it all, for everything that happens in the wood is true, and people who grow up in it are best at believing. Mathew though it was all as the minister said, that there is nothing better than pleasing God. Then when he lay awake at night, he would try to think how it would have been with him if he had never come to this place. In his heart he began to be afraid of the time when he would have to go back to the mountain, where there was no one to tell him about this most important thing in the world, for his father never talked to him of these things. It preyed upon his mind, but if anyone noticed it, they thought that he pined for his father and wished himself at home.
It drew toward mid-winter, and the white cap on The Hill of Summer Snow, which never quite melted even in the warmest weather, began to spread downward until it reached the charcoal-burner’s home. There was a great stir and excitement among the children, for it had been decided to have a Christmas tree in church. Every Sunday now the Christ-child story was told over and grew near and brighter like the Christmas star. Mathew had not known about it before, except that on a certain day in the year his father had bought him toys. He had supposed that it was because it was stormy and he had to be indoors. Now he was wrapped up in the story of love and sacrifice, and felt his heart grow larger as he breathed it in, looking upon clear, windless nights to see if he might discern the Star of Bethlehem rising over Pine Mountain and the Christ-child come walking on the snow. It was not that he really expected it, but that the story was so alive in him. It is easy for those who have lived long in the high mountains to believe in beautiful things. Mathew wished in his heart that he might never go away from this place. He sat in his seat in church, and all that the minister said sank deeply into his mind.
When it came time to decide about a tree, because Mathew’s father was a charcoal-burner and knew where they best trees grew, it was quite natural to ask him to furnish the tree for his part. Mathew fairly glowed with delight, and his father was pleased, too, for he liked to have his son noticed. The Saturday before Christmas, which fell on a Tuesday that year, was the time set for going for the tree, and by that time Mathew had quite settled in his mind that it should be his silver fir. He did not know how otherwise he could bring the tree to share in his new delight, nor what else he had worth giving, for he quite believed what he had been told, that it is only through giving the best beloved that one comes to the heart’s desire. With all his heart Mathew wished never to live in any place where he might not hear about God. So, when his father was ready with the ropes and the sharpened axe, the boy led the way to the silver firs.
“Why, that is a little beauty,” Father exclaimed, “and just the right size!”
They were obliged to shovel away the snow to get at it for cutting, and Mathew turned his face away when the chips began to fly. The tree fell upon its side with a shuddering sigh.; little beads clear resin stood about the scar of the axe. It seemed as if the tree wept.
But how graceful and trim it looked when it stood in the church waiting for gifts! Mathew hoped that it would understand.
Father came to church on Christmas eve, the first time in many years. He told himself that it makes a difference when you have a son taking part in the pageantry…and it did. The church and the tree were alight with candles; to Mathew it seemed like what he supposed the place of dreams might be. One large candle burned on top of the tree and threw out pointed rays like a star; it made Mathew think of Bethlehem. Then he heard the minister talking, and it was all about a cross and a star; but Mathew could only look at the tree, for he saw that it trembled, and he felt that he had betrayed it. Then the choir began to sing, and the candle on top of the tree burned down quite low, and Mathew saw the slender cross of the topmost bough stand up dark before it. Suddenly he remembered his old puzzle about it, how the smallest twigs were divided off in each in the shape of a cross, how the boughs repeated the star form every year, and what was true of his fir was true of all of them. Then it must have been that there were tears in his eyes, for he could not see plainly; the pillars of the church spread upward like the shafts of the trees, and the organ playing was like the sound of the wind in their branches, and the stately star-built firs rose up like spires, taller than the church tower, each with a cross on the top. The sapling, which was still before him trembled more, moving its boughs as if it spoke; and Mathew heard it in his heart and believed, for it spoke to him of God. Then all of the fear went out of his heart, and he had no more dread of going back to the mountain to spend his days, for now he knew that he need never be away from the green reminder of hope and sacrifice in the star and the gross of the silver fir; and the thought broadened in his mind that he might find more in the forest than he had ever thought to look for, since everything speaks of God in its own way and it is only a matter of understanding how.
It was very festive in the little church that Christmas night, with laughter and bonbons flying about, and every child had a package of candy and an armful of gifts. Father had his pockets bulging full of toys, and Mathew’s eyes glowed like the banked fires of the charcoal pits as they walked outside in the keen, windless night.
“Well, my boy, I’ve been pretty afraid that you won’t be wanting to go back to the mountain with me after all of this excitement.”
“Oh, yes, I will, Father!” Mathew replied happily, “for I think that mountain knows quite as much of the important things as they know here in the town.”
“Right you are, son,” his father said as he clapped Mathew on the back. “Merry Christmas!” they both exclaimed at that very same moment.
The very purpose of Christ’s coming into the world was that he might offer up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas. – Billy Graham
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque