The Treemen Cometh

Adam Mathews wakes up a little before 7 a.m., just as the November sun rises over Queens. Bret is on one side of the room, Willy on the other, wrapped in their sleeping bags. Before last night, they hadn?t seen each other in at least a year. Like kids at a sleep over they had stayed up talking and laughing.

Mathews should be more tired, but a hum of energy runs through him. He is psyched, pumped. He?s actually surprised he slept at all. It?s the day before Thanksgiving. He?s ready to go?today he becomes a tree man again. But unlike year?s past, Adam is going to run his own stand, his own way. This year, they are going make something really special happen.

Adam rouses the others.

They sleep in outdoor clothes and have various lengths of hair, facial and otherwise. Bret and Willy are part of Adam?s crew; they?re his like-minded posse of seasonal-working, adventure-seeking travelers. Some are from his hometown of Buffalo. Some are just kindred spirits he?s met on his travels. A group of them?six in all?heed his call for a chance at excitement, hard work and a few thousand dollars in earnings as New York City urban-camping tree men.

Downstairs is Adam?s right-hand man this year, the other Willie?Willie Jay, also from outside of Buffalo. Willie and Adam make an interesting pair. At over six-foot tall, Adam is skinny, with, long hair. He is handsome, with round, full facial features. Willie comes up to about Adam?s shoulder and is stockier? he played middle linebacker in high school?with a full beard over his sharp face and long hair of his own.

Adam sounds sort of like Woody Guthrie. Willie finishes most sentences with a laugh.

They stand in the kitchen, making small talk; how everyone slept, how they were feeling, recounting some of the conversations from the night before. They are joined by a big, middle-aged man named Greg. It is his house in College Point they crashed at that night and it would be his Christmas tree business of nearly 30 years that they would work for.

Everyone is eager to get on the road. They split into teams: Bret and Willy get in Bret?s van and head to the Central Park stand. Adam and Willie enter Willie?s white Oldsmobile sedan and they follow Greg?s truck. Their place of employment and home?their entire lives for the next month?is in Brooklyn.

The first time Adam considered selling Christmas trees, he was on his bike, riding through Astoria on his way to his delivery job in Midtown. It was shortly after Thanksgiving in 2006 and the cold was starting to set in but if you kept moving, you kept warm. Luckily the trip from Astoria provided plenty of time for working up some heat.

It was the pop-up Volkswagen trailer that first caught his eye?so cool?but he soon noticed the woman sitting outside by the trees. He stopped. Surrounded by her Christmas trees, the woman sat bundled up against the cold, sipping a gourd of yerba maté. Most people wouldn?t have thought twice about it, but Adam had a gourd of his own from Argentina?it was a reminder of the time and experiences down there.

?You drink maté,? Adam half-stated, half-asked.

The woman smiled; a quirky, Mona Lisa-kind of smile. She did, she said. From her accent he could tell she was Quebecoise. ?I got it in South America,? she said.

?What were you doing down there,? he asked, sensing a connection.

?Travel. Hitchhike. Ride bikes?whatever we wanted to,? she said. They were also exactly the same things Adam liked to do. This woman totally had a gypsy soul; a free-range attitude, an unencumbered way of operating.

He rode away. How great was that? She was totally different than anyone else he?d run across in New York City.

The visit with the woman stuck with him. He went back to visit her again not long after, bringing a bag of fresh maté with him, as a sort of offering. It was, after all, hard to find good maté in New York City at the time. She was pleased and thankful and that was the last time he would see her.

But he was struck by the experience, something about the quality of a person who would sit out in the freezing cold, on a New York City sidewalk, for weeks on end, selling Christmas trees. It seemed like an adventure.

Adam and Willie get out of the car. The stand is on Driggs Avenue, between Lorimer Street and Manhattan Avenue?the most northeastern portion of McCarren Park. There are a couple bars across the street, condos rising over everything else on another side. Everywhere else was park; naked trees, swing sets, and well-worn pathways cut through browning grass?New York City in late autumn.

Greg exits his truck and joins them. A pile of two-by-fours sit under a tarp on the cobblestone sidewalk. He and Adam walk the block as Greg explains his vision of the stand.

?You should have A-frame stands running from here,? he says, pointing to the middle of the block, ?to about here?you know, about two-thirds the way down."

?We?ll put the picture stands with the holes in them so the kids can take their picture looking like Santa at one end here, OK? You should put a row of stands against the fence there?use zip ties to secure them. Put them every, oh, maybe six or seven feet apart."

?Put a tarp over the trailer and the tables we?ll put in the middle, underneath, so everything?ll be covered,? he says. ?The generator and trailer should be delivered soon. Any questions??

?When are the trees getting here,? Adam asks.

?I don?t know. Don?t worry about the trees?no matter what, you?re not going to be ready for them.?

Greg gets back into his truck, leaving Adam and Willie stationary next to the pile of wood.

?OK,? Adam says. ?Let?s get to work.?

Greg?s into-the-fire shove of Adam and Willie wasn?t that big a deal. The other guys might be scrambling, but this isn?t Adam?s first time on a tree stand. It wasn?t even his first time on a stand owned by Greg.

The trailer and the generator show up shortly after Greg?s departure. The night before they?d debated where to put it?sidewalk or street. The permit they had from the Parks Department let them do either, but Greg was worried about street sweeping and tickets. Adam wasn?t concerned; if they kept the stand as orderly and neat has he planned, the sweepers wouldn?t really have a need to hit that part of the street.

The trailer is of the kind you find on construction sites?white vinyl exterior, ?70s grandmother?s basement wood paneling interior. It isn?t huge?about 20-by-8 feet?but it is Adam and Willie?s home, an exaggerated tent for their month-long urban camping experience.

By the late afternoon, the skeleton of the tree stand is almost up. Vertical two-by-fours are lashed to the park?s chest-high iron fence with plastic zip ties. Support feet stretched out from the bottom and lateral supports are screwed between them. Similar stands are set up on the street: an A-frame of two-by-fours at either end, connected by more two-by-fours in the top and the middle, and another (sometimes more than one) sits between the two long pieces for support.

The trailer is parked in the middle of the block. Across from it, a 12-foot wall of plywood is setup?a backdrop for the Christmas accessory table that will come. Adam isn?t too thrilled about it. It?s boring and stark. He has to see how everything will look setup, but they might have to make some changes.

Setting up a tree stand isn?t a haphazard or casual affair for Adam. Everything is done for maximum affect. In the end this isn?t going to be just a place where someone comes to buy something; it will be an experience, an enchanted forest. ?We just want to make everything nice, keep everything clean,? he says. ?We want to be happy?we are happy. We want to make people happy. When they?re happy, they?ll buy a tree.?

They take a maté break inside the trailer. It is something they connected with early in their friendship. Both Willie and Adam had spent considerable time in South America. Both had come away deeply affected by the experience. Willie had spent a year abroad, in Argentina, during college. Adam had once done a cattle run with Argentinean guachos and even helped a doctor do some animal husbandry. Yerba maté had become the link to their experiences and something that brought many of their friends together.

Maté is drunk out of a wooden gourd through a metal straw. It?s a raw pungent tea, free-floating in hot water. The straw has holes in the submerged end?moving it is strictly forbidden, as a matter of protocol. The tea itself is strong; chalky and almost peppery, without the spiciness.

Someone knocks; the person is told to come in. A round, pretty, elfin face appears in the crack of the partially opened door.

?Hi, I?m Corrie,? the young woman says.

Greg had told Adam and Willie they should expect another member of their team at some point?Corrie Zaccaria. The night before, Greg had brought up Corrie?s Facebook page.

?She?s cute, right?? he asks Adam.

She was cute, sure, but Adam was worried. Like lots of cute, artsy girls on Facebook, she was striking a pose in most of the shots. Was this the sort of person he could count on to sling 8-foot-tall Christmas trees for 10 hours a day?

She steps into the trailer. She is petite and dressed like she lives in one of the surrounding hip neighborhoods (which, turns out, she does?Bushwick, to be exact). She, too, had sought seasonal work after her last gig when the U.S. Open had ended. Unlike Adam and Willie, Corrie is looking for something local?a bridge to get her through December before taking off to visit family in the Philippines in January. She answered an ad on Craigslist and now there she is.

?So where you guys from," Corrie asks. She?s from New York City, born and raised.

?We?re from Buffalo,? Adam says.

?I?ve heard of it?you got a football team up there, right??

?Yeah,? Willie responds. ?Some waterfalls too.?

Willie laughs. Then they all laugh.

After Corrie receives her schedule and leaves, Adam and Willie get back to finishing the stands. Two A-frames are laid out on the cobblestone sidewalk. It?s already after 5pm and getting dark. They wait for an electrician to hook the generator up. Greg had been around earlier with one guy who balked at Greg?s offer. If another electrician doesn?t show up it will be hard to get someone out there on Thanksgiving Day. They will likely spend the night in the trailer, without heat.

As they work, passersby take notice of the stand. There aren?t a lot; it was, after all, the day before Thanksgiving. McCarren Park is quiet, even for a holiday eve. Except for the joggers?morning, night, pre-holiday, holiday, post-holiday, weekday or weekend, they would never stop their incessant pacing.

One man walks by Willie on the sidewalk. He?s wearing a long pea coat and dark-rimmed, stylish glasses. He has a balding, round head and moves down the street quickly; he catches Willie?in the middle of things, getting his head around what more they needed to do before it gets dark?off guard.

"When are you guys going to be open?" he asks.

Um?What day is it? The only relevant thing is Thanksgiving. The trees are coming after that, probably the day after. Willie knows that, so he says so.

"Friday," the man reiterates. "Good."

The bald man walks away as briskly as he came.

Adam?s first try at being a tree man was a bust.

It was 2008 and a few years had passed since his encounter with the maté-drinking Quebecoise. During the fall, he was cruising Craigslist?something he often does?when he came across an advertisement for seasonal help selling Christmas trees in New York City. Oh yeah?he had forgotten about that. It had seemed like it would be such an adventure. He hadn?t lined anything up for employment; why not give it a shot?

He emailed the contact on the Craigslist ad. The guy got back to him. He said it was his first year running tree stands and was looking for workers. In retrospect, considering the amount of work?with permits, tree deliveries and everything else?that goes into running a stand, that should have been the first sign of trouble. But Adam was unaware of these things and maybe, despite his world travels, a bit nave about the world of business.

The guy also told Adam he?d need his own vehicle. He remembered back to the Canadian woman?s pop-up trailer. Wouldn?t it be cool to get something like that? He started digging through Craigslist in search of a cheap van or RV that could work.

What he came across was better than he could have imagined. The picture was of a bright orange 1976 Winnebago, shot during a snowstorm. It looked amazing. $500. Was it legit? He called the seller up and went to see it. After a day of consideration, he decided to buy it.

With its bright orange paint job and the blue stripes, it was the hulking roided-out cousin of the Dukes of Hazard?s General Lee. She was a beast; a big Dodge engine, remodeled on the inside to look more like a lounge than a camper. And of course there was the horn: To Arm in Dixie. The General Winnie?he couldn?t have been more pumped.

He had only about four days to get everything ready to go. Over those days he kept in touch with the man in New York City, whom he?d never met. He sounded reliable over the phone; he sounded like a businessman.

The day he headed out for the city, Adam had to make one stop first. A man by the name of Tony had been hired as well, and he happened to live in downtown Buffalo. It wasn?t a nice place, to put it kindly. Adam honked the horn; the battle hymn of the Confederacy came blaring out.

When he saw Tony come out of his house, he felt a bit nervous. Tony was an older African American man with long dreadlocks?an actual Rastafarian. He opened the door to let him in to the Winnebago. In popped Tony, all smiles.

?Can you honk that horn again for my daughter,? he asked. ?She loves it.? Adam obliged.

On the road, Adam found himself really liking Tony. Tony had had a tough life, and told tales galore of mishaps and misery. But through it all there was a streak of the positive, always a silver lining. This drew him to Tony. Despite a world of difference between the two of them, they shared a way of looking at and dealing with the world: stay positive, embrace possibilities.

They drove through the night and arrived in New York City at daybreak on Thanksgiving Day. The guy had told Adam to drive to McCarren Park. He?d meet them there. Adam parked the General Winnie and gave the guy a call. No answer. No worries?it was really early. He?d take a nap and the guy would probably call him back soon. They?d be tree men before he knew it.

He woke up a few hours later. No phone call. He tried again. And again, no answer. There wasn?t a lot to do, given the holiday. They meandered about the park. Adam stopped by other tree sellers?even the stand he would eventually takeover?to see if anyone knew who this tree guy was. No one had heard of him. Adam remained positive. How could he not? He was about to live out a dream, in a way, and besides, New York City beat Buffalo any day of the week.

Tony wasn?t so sure. He had a daughter back home. In some ways, the divide in past fortunes setup a divided response to the situation, one Adam soon got over. He could see, could understand why Tony was having serious second thoughts. He kept calling, with no luck, even as Tony grew more convinced things weren?t going to work out.

Day turned to night and still no word from the man who had promised them jobs. Tony had had enough; he wanted to go home. Finally, Adam agreed and they left the city. On the way back Tony asked if they could stop in Monticello; he had family there and wanted to pick up some of his things they were holding for him.

While there, Adam got a phone call; it was the guy. He apologized?he?d left his phone at his office and had just gotten the messages. Adam was livid. He laid in to him, cursing and yelling in a way he?d never done before. He honestly believed the guy had set them up, like some sort of sick prank. Finally he had to give the phone to Tony. The guy wanted them to come back. He?d pay for all their expenses and give them his best stand. But it was too late: both Adam and Tony had soured on the situation, not believing they could trust the guy. They were back in Buffalo by the middle of that day, the day after Thanksgiving.

Almost two years later to the day, Adam and Willie are woken up by a soft knock on the trailer door. The sun has yet to rise. The night before, they had visited friends in the Bronx for Thanksgiving. It had been an amazing time and meal, but they returned as early as possible to prepare for just such a knock. The trees had arrived.

After his first failed attempt at being a tree man, Adam returned to Buffalo feeling restless. He understood why Tony needed to get back, but in his heart he still wanted to be in New York City selling trees.

He called up some friends in Washington Heights. They let him crash on their couch as he sought out a stand that might take him on. Finally, he found one: a small spot near New York-Presbyterian Hospital, run by two French-speaking men?one Quebecois, the other actually French.

He took the nightshift and was shown the ropes by the Frenchman?how to keep the stand clean, how to present a tree?knock it on the sidewalk to show the needles stay on, turn it to display its shape?s relative symmetry?and how many trees to keep bundled, how many to open. His shift started at 9 p.m. and ended sometime between 7 and 8 a.m.

It only lasted 12 days, but Adam was hooked. The following year he did his research and found Greg. They met; he seemed trustworthy. That Thanksgiving Day he flew down and joined Bret?whom he had met earlier that year in Colorado?on a stand near Greg?s home in Queens.

They worked with some of Greg?s regular workers and Adam learned what he didn?t want to do with a stand. To them it was just a job?the grind. A place to get to and look forward to leaving. For both Adam and Bret?but Adam in particular?it was an adventure. On top of the outdoorsman quality of it, there were deeper reasons to embrace the experience. As a small child, Adam would sit in front of the Christmas tree in his parent?s house and just feel joy. Pure, simple, uncomplicated joy. It was a special experience to participate in that process now, and it showed in how he approached his work.

Now, a year later, it was to begin all over again.

Adam opens the door to see Greg standing there.

?The trees are here,? he says. Sure enough, a tractor-trailer bed full of conifers is parked nearby. It arrived sometime in the night. With the generator working?they got it hooked up late last night, after a frigid first one?they hadn?t heard it pulled in.

Adam and Willie join a young guy Greg brought with him to help unload the trees?300 North Carolina Fraser firs. Unlike many tree sellers in New York City, Greg deals directly with growers. Last year, he even went so far as to try and start a cooperative with a number of them, allowing them to bring their trees directly to the city and, thus, buyers. Things fell through when it turned out the growers weren?t particularly good at the distribution end of the business.

During the summer Greg works with small local buyers to generate enough pre-orders on trees to justify a delivery. The hardest part isn?t finding people to buy from; it?s having enough trees on a truck to make it worthwhile for everyone involved. He visits the actual tree farms in central North Carolina to find the best growers at the best prices. The tree lots aren?t usually acres and acres of trees. In reality the trees?which have to be grown on the sides of hills to avoid root rot?are on disparate plots: one here, another over there, some 30 miles away. Very few if any of the growers? properties are contiguous.

The lots are usually leased from landowners for seven or eight years. How do you grow a full-sized Christmas tree in that amount of time? Most growers start with plugs?an inch-or two-tall baby trees?that are planted in yearly waves. Trees grow about a foot a year; after seven or eight years, you?ll have a tree about that tall. Want a smaller tree? Find one planted a few years later.

Fraser firs have become the preeminent tree in the city. Not as plush as, say, a balsam fir or as aromatic as a Douglas, but the tree retains its needles and holds up to the demands of ornaments quite like a blue-hued Fraser. They dominate every stand Greg owns.

Trees come off the truck wrapped tightly in blue twine. Each tree is color coded according to quality; gold is the best, purple the worst. A tag reads, ?Greg?s Quality Christmas Trees.? Greg sees it and is floored.

?I?ve never seen such a thing,? he says, beaming.

It takes a few hours but soon the stand is officially open for business. Not long after, Willie gets a shot at the first customer?a woman who lives in one of the nearby condos.

?How much for this one,? she asks. It?s a monster of a tree; a beautiful 12-foot-tall Fraser. It?s as much a trophy as a celebratory decoration.

Willie is feeling his beginner's luck. ?$240,? he says.

She thinks for moment. ?OK. I?ll take it. I don?t really care how much it is, it just has to be big.?

Willie is beside himself. A $240 sale on the very first tree anyone?s asked about, let alone it?s one of the biggest trees they have?the hardest type of tree to get rid of. Adam explains the system: $10 to $15, per foot, depending on the quality of the tree. But here he bags a whale of a sale and they?d barely begun.

?Do you take credit cards,? the woman asks. Willie is crestfallen. Greg was supposed to have brought the credit card slips, but had forgotten them.

?We?ll have them tomorrow.?

?Oh,? she says. ?Well, hold it for me. It?s the one I want. ? She walks away and doesn?t return.

Each day, Adam, Willie and Corrie do something to improve the stand, even just a little bit. In the beginning it?s the essentials: getting the lights strung above everything, putting the tarp up and making it secure against the wind, hanging wreaths from lattices secured to the side of the trailer. Adam finds a rocking chair on the street. He and Willie fix it up for a nice place to sit. Corrie brings her dog, Olive, a small, shorthaired little bullet of a thing.

The weekdays are spent preparing for the week nights; the weekends are consistently busy. They sell trees morning, afternoon and evening, though. People would stop by at 1 a.m. The bars across the street tend to make things interesting.

Shortly after midnight on their first Sunday, a young woman wanders into the stand. She has two friends with her. She is a bit drunk?not total word slurring or wobbling yet, but close. She approaches Willie.

?How much are the trees,? she asks. It?s the most common question.

?Depends. How big a tree are you looking to get??

?The biggest fucking tree you have,? she says.

Willie laughs. ?OK, well, we have some big 12-footers back there.?

?No, no, no,? she says, waving the thought away. ?How much is this one??

Willie shows her and her friends different trees, pulling them forward, knocking the trunk against the ground. Her friends find the whole thing sort of suspect, but the young woman?a petite blond in a sharp red button-down jacket and gold slip-ons?was determined to get her tree that night. Though that appeared to be as far as things would get.

?I?m too drunk to decorate it tonight,? she says.

Finally they settle on a nice five-footer. There?s one problem: the woman insists she has a stand somewhere?at home or her parent?s place or somewhere?but is concerned she won?t find it. She tries to negotiate a cheaper price from Willie since, obviously, she probably won?t actually need the stand.

?How about this,? he says. ?If you find your other stand, just bring this one back. I?ll give you a refund.? Willie knows there is no way they will bring the stand back once they have the tree in it.

Deal!

Willie pulls the tree through the plastic netting shoot. It?s good to go. The woman?s friend, however, is only helping her bring the thing home if he can get another drink.

?We?ll just bring the tree with us,? he says.

?Just tell them you got it from us,? Willie says.

One friend on the stump end, the other at the top, and the young revelers march across the street and into to the bar, tree and all.

?I watch people?s first reaction,? Corrie says. ?If they don?t immediately respond, I?ll say, ?I don?t think this is the tree for you.? Some people don?t care, others care about every little detail.?

Willie helps a young couple pick a tree. There is a degree of uncertainty about the process. Maybe it?s their first tree in their first apartment. Willie sells them on a modest four-foot fir. It?s not the fullest or the most symmetrical but there is a connection. As he starts cutting off the base?something they do for all the trees?joy comes over the couples? faces. They kiss.

Willie hands them their tree. They smile, thank him and walk away, bodies close to one another.

Adam wants to put a tree on top of the trailer. He crosses the street to survey the situation.

?Last year, when I was in College Point, we mounted the biggest tree we had on the roof of the bowling alley next to our stand,? he says. ?We threw lights on it and lit it up. It was the second biggest tree in New York after Rockefeller Center."

?We used a five-gallon bucket, filled it with stones and stuff to secure it. I remember going under a bridge somewhere gathering stones. I think we put some water in as well.?

He stands in silence for a minute, staring at the roof of the trailer. It?s getting dark. The generator is on, humming in the background. The stand lights glow.

?You can just kind of visualize it, in your head,? he says. ?But I don?t know how far to go with the decorations. It?s almost like you can never do enough. I definitely want to have people mention it as dinner conversation. Like, ?Did you see the tree stand at McCarren Park this year?? ?Yeah, it?s really great this year.?

?You know, like, to get an honorable mention like that would fill my heart with joy. That?s all I ask for, really. Just maybe for people to mention it at the dinner table. Give them something positive?a positive image in their minds. Something that kind of makes their heart feel all warm inside.?

The next day the tree is up and decorated with colorful lights, tied down at all four points of the trailer?s roof. It?s visible from blocks away as people approach the stand.

Days pass and turn into weeks. The three sellers fall into routines. Adam and Willie split the late night shifts, often staying up until 4 a.m. Most nights, at some point, they make a sale. Corrie arrives almost every morning and stays into the night. It quickly becomes clear there is no reason for concern about her ability to sling trees.

Adam, opining on the virtues of tree wrangling, says, ?A tree man?s gotta be tough as nails?as tough as the pitch on his hands.? Corrie says she sought the job as a chance to literally get her hands dirty. And she does: day in and out, hers are as pitch-covered and filthy as either of the boys.

Greg stops by most evenings?during the day he works at a public school?sometimes with a tree refill, sometimes with random things. One day he showed up with a long cardboard box. Ripping open one side revealed a glittery red jumble of colored pinecones.

?These things have been sitting in my freaking attic for two years,? he says. ?I thought people?d go crazy over these things?look at them; they?re beautiful. But now I just want them gone. I?ll just give them away.? And so he does: every tree buyer gets offered one, as do children shopping with their parents.

It?s getting colder. Adam begins wearing his cold weather boots that make his feet sweat when he moves around too much. Sleeping bags cover his legs during night watches. Bathing?which Willie and Adam did only once in the first two weeks?isn?t much of an issue with so many dense layers.

The camp is supplied by a steady stream of trash-pilfered food?dumpster diving is the colloquial term?provided by Willie?s nightly visits to local grocery stores and bakeries. Day (or two) old bagels and muffins, just-expired gourmet instant soups and hummus, almond butter that wasn?t selling?even an enormous haul of matzo just after the start of Hanukkah.

Adam runs a tight ship. In fact, the analogy to seamanship wasn?t a stretch: he once spent a month on a tuna boat in the Pacific and last year helped sail a boat from Buffalo to Charleston, South Carolina. The stand, like a boat, requires a constant routine of upkeep to make it work?endless sweeping, repositioning trees and opening new ones once others sold, making ornamental wreaths?a job largely handled by the Fashion Institute of Technology graduate Corrie?and numerous other small, continual efforts to keep the stand at the level of quality Adam expected.

There is only one thing drives Adam crazy, though: that white plywood wall they?d set up on the first day. They?d tried covering it with hanging wreaths, but it was still so stark, so? un-Christmas.

What Adam really wanted was a mural?something that would bring together the stand, really make it feel like a retreat away from the city surrounding them, something that would be the capstone on the enchanted forest.

It?s late at night and well below freezing. Adam sits in the rocking chair, legs wrapped in a sleeping back, hood of his jacket pulled tight around his face. On the butane camping stove he cooks egg and bacon sandwiches in a cast iron skillet?a favorite late night treat of his. He was thinking about the stand?how it had developed, this year as well as an idea, in his mind for a long time now.

?I think I?ve always had a vision of what it could be, from the first time I met the woman in Astoria,? he says. ?Then, my imagination kind of began to run away. I started envisioning this holy tree stand. I think my vision is slowly forming."

?What better way to experience the world than selling something as universal as a Christmas tree?something you can all relate to? It's a great common ground.?

He cracks an egg open into the skillet with his gloved hands.

?I don't think Greg sees that. See, a part of me that Greg is probably totally out of touch with is the camping and the wilderness experience, which has been a huge influence in my life. A true wilderness experience has really, like?I?ve felt it. There?s this presence, this nature. This great force? spirit out there. It?s just like these giant vast open spaces and knowing that you're the only one there, it's an incredible feeling.?

He flips the egg over. He cuts a roll in half with his utility knife and puts it in the skillet to toast.

?You can be in the Adirondacks or in Colorado. You can stand at a point and look 360-degrees and you will not see a sign of civilization, whatsoever. It's just untouched land, untouched. And then you go here and you go to the top floor of this building,? he says, pointing to one of the taller condos next to the park. ?You do the same thing and you see nothing but the opposite. It is completely covered in man-made buildings. Everything is man made, even the parks.?

He piles the egg and bacon onto the warm bread and takes a bite. ?We're in a paradox here,? he says, looking around at the rows of fir trees lining the sidewalk. ?That's what is so cool about this place, it's a total paradox. These two worlds clash: you got the contrast of this nitty-gritty and then, all nature.?

On their trip to the city, Adam?s bike got dinged up and he had to bring his tire to the bike shop a few blocks away on Driggs Avenue. He had some good conversations with those guys and it turned out one of them was friends with an artist who might be interested in helping Adam with his mural idea.

A few phone calls later and Adam had a young woman named Thyra agreeing to give it a shot. He wanted something sort of classic?he and Greg had discussed making sure it was something Greg could live with for years to come?but also something that would show the two worlds, the wilderness and the urban landscapes, coming together.

It?s the end of their second week in the city when Adam gets the word that the mural is finished. Thyra had used a friend?s art studio close to their stand. He just needed to drive over to pick it up.

Adam could barely contain his excitement. All his plans were coming together. It was an adventure, in a way that differed from how most people might think of adventure.

?This is like rafting the Colorado River,? he says in the car on his way to pickup the mural. ?You?re on the raft day after day, after day. It?s like that: you?re on the stand day after day, after day."

?You?re always kind of on the edge of your seat. But here it?s just incredible, for the human factor. There are so many human beings that just spice it up. When people are excited they charge you up. I don?t sleep that much but once I?m out, slinging trees, I?m just constantly energized, with all the energy the people have. I just feed off of that."

?But no one is going to give you that energy if you don?t run a good looking stand,? he notes. ?If you?re stand is sad, the people won?t be happy and you?re not going to be happy. It?s just sort of going to be a sad sight. So that?s why I want to keep it like a tight ship.?

That?s what makes it an adventure?the reciprocal relationship: the effort of making the stand great, the reactions of the people who visit, and the high energy that Adam feeds off that keeps him going. It was a way of being in the world. It was what he lived for.

Thyra meets Adam at the door of the studio space?an art complex near the waterfront in Williamsburg. Adam?s mouth drops when he sees the mural: an eight-foot by four-foot winter wonderland scene. Pines decorated in colored garlands give way to a snow-covered path with footprints leading back to the water in the distance, where the skyline pokes through. A bright star hangs over the Empire State Building.

?Do you like it?? Thyra asks. Her black pants are smeared in various colors of paint. She hasn?t been given much instruction, just general ideas. There is uncertainty in her voice.

?Oh, my God, it?s amazing,? Adam says. He means it.

?I almost got the name wrong,? she says, pointing to a banner at the very top: Greg?s Quality Christmas Trees. Just like the tags. ?I almost wrote, ?Greg?s Finest Quality Christmas Trees.??

She points to a tree filled with seeming randomness: a bicycle, a mustache, pancakes.

?You got my pancakes in there,? Adam says. ?That?s awesome.? He?d requested them?just pancakes. Who doesn?t like pancakes?

They carry the painting outside and strap it to the car. Back at the stand, everyone loves it almost as much as Adam. Almost: he keeps staring at it, wide smile on his face, like the boy who got exactly what he wanted for Christmas. He excitedly clears away the knickknacks on the table?lights, fake Poinsettias, a basket full of colored pinecones?and mounted it. A perfect fit.

He steps back and marvels. Willie and Corrie turn to take care of customers interested in a tree. Adam can?t stop admiring it.

?It?s big,? he says. ?It?s amazing. It?s like?whoa.? He shakes his head softly, smiling. ?It?s come true,? he says.