Thursday, December 14
BENNINGTON — Nested between a seemingly endless array of black cherry Alders in the Green Mountain National Forest sits several very tall, very well manicured balsam firs waiting for next November when one of them will be cut, decorated and placed in front of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

Two representatives from the Green Mountain National Forest and one from the Capitol Christmas Tree Committee visited the secret site where the trees are growing yesterday and said things are looking good. There are 10 to 15 candidate trees in the forest now, and the winning tree will be chosen by Ted Bechtol, deputy superintendent of the U.S. Capitol grounds, next year.

"They would like 10 to 15 trees to look at, but that's quite a few," said Forest Service worker Jay Klink. "We have about six really good ones."

Former Bennington County Forester Jim White said the candidate trees were identified in 1980, and have been babied ever since. White said hardwood trees surrounding the candidates have been thinned out every year to give the firs more light. Some of the trees have also been injected with a systemic insecticide to prevent balsam wolly adelgid — an insect that feeds on fir trees — from killing them.

"That can happen at any time," White said. "We're always in peril."

Despite their best intentions, mother nature has thrown some curve balls to the tree caretakers. White

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said there are beavers building a damn nearby that threatens to flood the area, and 18-inch ice cakes can sometimes hit trees and kill them. Most recently, one of the nicer candidate trees produced an excessive amount of pine cones, taking energy from the tree.

"When you deal with mother nature, you never know what you're going to get," White said. "You just cross your fingers."

When asked what makes the perfect candidate tree, White said it needs to be bright green, dense, straight and close to a road. White said it can be very costly to extract a tree when there's no road nearby. He gave an example of a capitol tree that came from Virginia a few years ago that cost $30,000 to extract by helicopter.

White isn't expecting any complications when the tree is extracted next November, and he said the event will be surrounded by much fanfare.

The 2007 Capitol Christmas Tree will be the fourth to come from the state and coincides with the 75th anniversary of the Green Mountain National Forest. The 60-foot main tree and nearly 70 companion trees will be taken to the nation's capital by the Bulldawgs, a group of antique Mack truck enthusiasts.

"They took the trees, companion trees and paraphernalia in 1994, and they jumped at the chance to do it again," White said. "It's quite a donation."

People from around the state will contribute to the celebrations by creating the nearly 3,000 decorations needed for the main tree, decorations for the companion trees and by providing Vermont products to promote the state during the trip.

"We wanted to make it a state project, not just a few peoples' project," White said. "There's enough work for everybody."

Don Keelan is in charge of the budget and fund-raising for the 2007 campaign, and said the committee's been working for several months already. He said the cost of getting the trees to the nation's capital could cost as much as $90,000, but he's counting on Vermonters to come through with donations to help defer the cost. Some of the big-ticket items include fuel, housing, food and marketing.

"While these items are in the budget, many of them may turn out to be contributed services," Keelan said. "Now the next push is to go out and get sponsors to help defray the costs."

Keelan said it cost about $10,000 to get the tree to Washington D.C., in 1994, and the tree committee raised more than $11,000. The costs were lower in 1994 because all the fuel and hotel costs during the trip were donated.