The Treemen Cometh

Adam Mathews wakes up alittle before 7 a.m., just as the November sun rises over Queens. Bret is onone 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 ata sleep over they had stayed up talking and laughing.

Mathews should be moretired, but a hum of energy runs through him. He is psyched, pumped. He'sactually surprised he slept at all. It's the day before Thanksgiving. He'sready to go-today he becomes a tree man again. But unlike year's past, Adam isgoing to run his own stand, his own way. This year, they are going makesomething 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 ofseasonal-working, adventure-seeking travelers. Some are from his hometown ofBuffalo. Some are just kindred spirits he's met on his travels. A group ofthem-six in all-heed his call for a chance at excitement, hard work and a fewthousand dollars in earnings as New York City urban-camping tree men.

Downstairs is Adam'sright-hand man this year, the other Willie-Willie Jay, also from outside ofBuffalo. Willie and Adam make an interesting pair. At over six-foot tall, Adamis 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 middlelinebacker in high school-with a full beard over his sharp face and long hairof his own.

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

They stand in the kitchen,making small talk; how everyone slept, how they were feeling, recounting someof 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 atthat night and it would be his Christmas tree business of nearly 30 years thatthey would work for.

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

The first time Adamconsidered selling Christmas trees, he was on his bike, riding through Astoriaon his way to his delivery job in Midtown. It was shortly after Thanksgiving in2006 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-upVolkswagen trailer that first caught his eye-so cool-but he soon noticed thewoman sitting outside by the trees. He stopped. Surrounded by her Christmastrees, the woman sat bundled up against the cold, sipping a gourd of yerbamaté. Most people wouldn't have thought twice about it, but Adam had a gourd ofhis own from Argentina-it was a reminder of the time and experiences downthere.

"You drink maté," Adamhalf-stated, half-asked.

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

"What were you doing downthere," he asked, sensing a connection.

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

He rode away. How great wasthat? She was totally different than anyone else he'd run across in New YorkCity.

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

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

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

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

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

"We'll put the picturestands with the holes in them so the kids can take their picture looking likeSanta at one end here, OK? You should put a row of stands against the fencethere-use zip ties to secure them. Put them every, oh, maybe six or seven feetapart."

"Put a tarp over thetrailer and the tables we'll put in the middle, underneath, so everything'll becovered," he says. "The generator and trailer should be delivered soon. Anyquestions?"

"When are the trees gettinghere," Adam asks.

"I don't know. Don't worryabout the trees-no matter what, you're not going to be ready for them."

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

"OK," Adam says. "Let's getto work."

Greg's into-the-fire shoveof 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 timeon a stand owned by Greg.

The trailer and the generatorshow up shortly after Greg's departure. The night before they'd debated whereto put it-sidewalk or street. The permit they had from the Parks Department letthem do either, but Greg was worried about street sweeping and tickets. Adamwasn'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 kindyou find on construction sites-white vinyl exterior, '70s grandmother'sbasement wood paneling interior. It isn't huge-about 20-by-8 feet-but it isAdam and Willie's home, an exaggerated tent for their month-long urban campingexperience.

By the late afternoon, theskeleton of the tree stand is almost up. Vertical two-by-fours are lashed tothe park's chest-high iron fence with plastic zip ties. Support feet stretchedout from the bottom and lateral supports are screwed between them. Similarstands 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 inthe middle of the block. Across from it, a 12-foot wall of plywood is setup-abackdrop for the Christmas accessory table that will come. Adam isn't toothrilled about it. It's boring and stark. He has to see how everything willlook setup, but they might have to make some changes.

Setting up a tree standisn't a haphazard or casual affair for Adam. Everything is done for maximumaffect. In the end this isn't going to be just a place where someone comes tobuy something; it will be an experience, an enchanted forest. "We just want tomake everything nice, keep everything clean," he says. "We want to be happy-weare happy. We want to make people happy. When they're happy, they'll buy atree."

They take a maté breakinside the trailer. It is something they connected with early in theirfriendship. Both Willie and Adam had spent considerable time in South America.Both had come away deeply affected by the experience. Willie had spent a yearabroad, in Argentina, during college. Adam had once done a cattle run withArgentinean guachos and even helped a doctor do some animal husbandry. Yerbamaté had become the link to their experiences and something that brought manyof their friends together.

Maté is drunk out of awooden gourd through a metal straw. It's a raw pungent tea, free-floating inhot water. The straw has holes in the submerged end-moving it is strictlyforbidden, as a matter of protocol. The tea itself is strong; chalky and almostpeppery, without the spiciness.

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

"Hi, I'm Corrie," the youngwoman says.

Greg had told Adam andWillie they should expect another member of their team at some point-CorrieZaccaria. The night before, Greg had brought up Corrie's Facebook page.

"She's cute, right?" heasks Adam.

She was cute, sure, butAdam was worried. Like lots of cute, artsy girls on Facebook, she was strikinga pose in most of the shots. Was this the sort of person he could count on tosling 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 hipneighborhoods (which, turns out, she does-Bushwick, to be exact). She, too, hadsought 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 herthrough December before taking off to visit family in the Philippines inJanuary. 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," Adamsays.

"I've heard of it-you got afootball team up there, right?"

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

Willie laughs. Then theyall laugh.

After Corrie receives herschedule and leaves, Adam and Willie get back to finishing the stands. TwoA-frames are laid out on the cobblestone sidewalk. It's already after 5pm andgetting dark. They wait for an electrician to hook the generator up. Greg hadbeen around earlier with one guy who balked at Greg's offer. If anotherelectrician doesn't show up it will be hard to get someone out there onThanksgiving Day. They will likely spend the night in the trailer, withoutheat.

As they work, passersbytake notice of the stand. There aren't a lot; it was, after all, the day beforeThanksgiving. McCarren Park is quiet, even for a holiday eve. Except for thejoggers-morning, night, pre-holiday, holiday, post-holiday, weekday or weekend, they would never stop their incessant pacing.

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

"Whenare you guys going to be open?" he asks.

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

"Friday," the manreiterates. "Good."

The bald man walks away asbriskly as he came.

Adam's first try at being atree man was a bust.

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

He emailed the contact onthe Craigslist ad. The guy got back to him. He said it was his first yearrunning tree stands and was looking for workers. In retrospect, considering theamount 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 wasunaware of these things and maybe, despite his world travels, a bit nave aboutthe world of business.

The guy also told Adam he'dneed 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 throughCraigslist in search of a cheap van or RV that could work.

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

With its bright orangepaint job and the blue stripes, it was the hulking roided-out cousin of the Dukesof Hazard's General Lee. She was abeast; a big Dodge engine, remodeled on the inside to look more like a loungethan a camper. And of course there was the horn: To Arm in Dixie. The GeneralWinnie-he couldn't have been more pumped.

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

The day he headed out forthe city, Adam had to make one stop first. A man by the name of Tony had beenhired as well, and he happened to live in downtown Buffalo. It wasn't a niceplace, to put it kindly. Adam honked the horn; the battle hymn of theConfederacy came blaring out.

When he saw Tony come outof his house, he felt a bit nervous. Tony was an older African American manwith long dreadlocks-an actual Rastafarian. He opened the door to let him in tothe Winnebago. In popped Tony, all smiles.

"Can you honk that hornagain for my daughter," he asked. "She loves it." Adam obliged.

On the road, Adam foundhimself really liking Tony. Tony had had a tough life, and told tales galore ofmishaps 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 differencebetween the two of them, they shared a way of looking at and dealing with theworld: stay positive, embrace possibilities.

They drove through thenight and arrived in New York City at daybreak on Thanksgiving Day. The guy hadtold Adam to drive to McCarren Park. He'd meet them there. Adam parked theGeneral 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 betree men before he knew it.

He woke up a few hourslater. No phone call. He tried again. And again, no answer. There wasn't a lotto do, given the holiday. They meandered about the park. Adam stopped by othertree 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. Howcould he not? He was about to live out a dream, in a way, and besides, New YorkCity beat Buffalo any day of the week.

Tony wasn't so sure. He hada daughter back home. In some ways, the divide in past fortunes setup a dividedresponse to the situation, one Adam soon got over. He could see, couldunderstand why Tony was having serious second thoughts. He kept calling, withno luck, even as Tony grew more convinced things weren't going to work out.

Day turned to night andstill no word from the man who had promised them jobs. Tony had had enough; hewanted to go home. Finally, Adam agreed and they left the city. On the way backTony 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 aphone call; it was the guy. He apologized-he'd left his phone at his office andhad just gotten the messages. Adam was livid. He laid in to him, cursing andyelling in a way he'd never done before. He honestly believed the guy had setthem up, like some sort of sick prank. Finally he had to give the phone toTony. The guy wanted them to come back. He'd pay for all their expenses andgive them his best stand. But it was too late: both Adam and Tony had soured onthe situation, not believing they could trust the guy. They were back inBuffalo by the middle of that day, the day after Thanksgiving.

Almost two years later tothe day, Adam and Willie are woken up by a soft knock on the trailer door. Thesun has yet to rise. The night before, they had visited friends in the Bronxfor 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 failedattempt at being a tree man, Adam returned to Buffalo feeling restless. Heunderstood why Tony needed to get back, but in his heart he still wanted to bein New York City selling trees.

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

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

It only lasted 12 days, butAdam was hooked. The following year he did his research and found Greg. Theymet; he seemed trustworthy. That Thanksgiving Day he flew down and joinedBret-whom he had met earlier that year in Colorado-on a stand near Greg's homein Queens.

They worked with some ofGreg'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 toleaving. For both Adam and Bret-but Adam in particular-it was an adventure. Ontop of the outdoorsman quality of it, there were deeper reasons to embrace theexperience. As a small child, Adam would sit in front of the Christmas tree inhis parent's house and just feel joy. Pure, simple, uncomplicated joy. It was aspecial experience to participate in that process now, and it showed in how heapproached his work.

Now, a year later, it wasto begin all over again.

Adam opens the door to seeGreg standing there.

"The trees are here," hesays. Sure enough, a tractor-trailer bed full of conifers is parked nearby. Itarrived sometime in the night. With the generator working-they got it hooked uplate last night, after a frigid first one-they hadn't heard it pulled in.

Adam and Willie join ayoung guy Greg brought with him to help unload the trees-300 North CarolinaFraser firs. Unlike many tree sellers in New York City, Greg deals directlywith growers. Last year, he even went so far as to try and start a cooperativewith a number of them, allowing them to bring their trees directly to the cityand, thus, buyers. Things fell through when it turned out the growers weren'tparticularly good at the distribution end of the business.

During the summer Gregworks with small local buyers to generate enough pre-orders on trees to justifya delivery. The hardest part isn't finding people to buy from; it's havingenough trees on a truck to make it worthwhile for everyone involved. He visitsthe actual tree farms in central North Carolina to find the best growers at thebest prices. The tree lots aren't usually acres and acres of trees. In realitythe trees-which have to be grown on the sides of hills to avoid root rot-are ondisparate plots: one here, another over there, some 30 miles away. Very few ifany of the growers' properties are contiguous.

The lots are usually leasedfrom landowners for seven or eight years. How do you grow a full-sizedChristmas 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 afoot 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 thepreeminent tree in the city. Not as plush as, say, a balsam fir or as aromaticas a Douglas, but the tree retains its needles and holds up to the demands ofornaments quite like a blue-hued Fraser. They dominate every stand Greg owns.

Trees come off the truckwrapped 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 ChristmasTrees." Greg sees it and is floored.

"I've never seen such athing," he says, beaming.

It takes a few hours butsoon the stand is officially open for business. Not long after, Willie gets ashot 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 asmuch a trophy as a celebratory decoration.

Willie is feeling hisbeginner'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 ofthe biggest trees they have-the hardest type of tree to get rid of. Adamexplains the system: $10 to $15, per foot, depending on the quality of thetree. 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 thecredit card slips, but had forgotten them.

"We'll have them tomorrow."

"Oh," she says. "Well, holdit for me. It's the one I want. " She walks away and doesn't return.

Each day, Adam, Willie andCorrie do something to improve the stand, even just a little bit. In thebeginning it's the essentials: getting the lights strung above everything,putting the tarp up and making it secure against the wind, hanging wreaths fromlattices secured to the side of the trailer. Adam finds a rocking chair on thestreet. 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 spentpreparing for the week nights; the weekends are consistently busy. They selltrees 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 ontheir first Sunday, a young woman wanders into the stand. She has two friendswith her. She is a bit drunk-not total word slurring or wobbling yet, butclose. She approaches Willie.

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

"Depends. How big a treeare you looking to get?"

"The biggest fucking treeyou 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 herfriends different trees, pulling them forward, knocking the trunk against theground. Her friends find the whole thing sort of suspect, but the young woman-apetite 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 wouldget.

"I'm too drunk to decorateit tonight," she says.

Finally they settle on anice five-footer. There's one problem: the woman insists she has a stand somewhere-athome or her parent's place or somewhere-but is concerned she won't find it. Shetries to negotiate a cheaper price from Willie since, obviously, she probablywon'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 arefund." Willie knows there is no way they will bring the stand back once theyhave the tree in it.

Deal!

Willie pulls the treethrough 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 treewith us," he says.

"Just tell them you got itfrom us," Willie says.

One friend on the stumpend, the other at the top, and the young revelers march across the street andinto to the bar, tree and all.

"I watch people's firstreaction," Corrie says. "If they don't immediately respond, I'll say, 'I don'tthink this is the tree for you.' Some people don't care, others care aboutevery little detail."

Willie helps a young couplepick a tree. There is a degree of uncertainty about the process. Maybe it'stheir first tree in their first apartment. Willie sells them on a modestfour-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 comesover the couples' faces. They kiss.

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

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

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

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

He stands in silence for aminute, staring at the roof of the trailer. It's getting dark. The generator ison, humming in the background. The stand lights glow.

"You can just kind ofvisualize it, in your head," he says. "But I don't know how far to go with thedecorations. It's almost like you can never do enough. I definitely want tohave people mention it as dinner conversation. Like, 'Did you see the treestand at McCarren Park this year?' 'Yeah, it's really great this year.'

"You know, like, to get anhonorable 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 themsomething positive-a positive image in their minds. Something that kind ofmakes their heart feel all warm inside."

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

Days pass and turn intoweeks. The three sellers fall into routines. Adam and Willie split the latenight shifts, often staying up until 4 a.m. Most nights, at some point, theymake a sale. Corrie arrives almost every morning and stays into the night. Itquickly becomes clear there is no reason for concern about her ability to slingtrees.

Adam, opining on thevirtues of tree wrangling, says, "A tree man's gotta be tough as nails-as toughas the pitch on his hands." Corrie says she sought the job as a chance toliterally 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 mostevenings-during the day he works at a public school-sometimes with a treerefill, sometimes with random things. One day he showed up with a longcardboard box. Ripping open one side revealed a glittery red jumble of coloredpinecones.

"These things have beensitting in my freaking attic for two years," he says. "I thought people'd gocrazy over these things-look at them; they're beautiful. But now I just wantthem gone. I'll just give them away." And so he does: every tree buyer getsoffered one, as do children shopping with their parents.

It's getting colder. Adambegins wearing his cold weather boots that make his feet sweat when he movesaround 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 muchof an issue with so many dense layers.

The camp is supplied by asteady stream of trash-pilfered food-dumpster diving is the colloquialterm-provided by Willie's nightly visits to local grocery stores and bakeries.Day (or two) old bagels and muffins, just-expired gourmet instant soups andhummus, almond butter that wasn't selling-even an enormous haul of matzo justafter the start of Hanukkah.

Adam runs a tight ship. Infact, the analogy to seamanship wasn't a stretch: he once spent a month on atuna boat in the Pacific and last year helped sail a boat from Buffalo toCharleston, South Carolina. The stand, like a boat, requires a constant routineof upkeep to make it work-endless sweeping, repositioning trees and opening newones once others sold, making ornamental wreaths-a job largely handled by theFashion 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 thingdrives Adam crazy, though: that white plywood wall they'd set up on the firstday. They'd tried covering it with hanging wreaths, but it was still so stark,so? un-Christmas.

What Adam really wanted wasa mural-something that would bring together the stand, really make it feel likea retreat away from the city surrounding them, something that would be thecapstone on the enchanted forest.

It's late at night and wellbelow freezing. Adam sits in the rocking chair, legs wrapped in a sleepingback, hood of his jacket pulled tight around his face. On the butane campingstove he cooks egg and bacon sandwiches in a cast iron skillet-a favorite latenight treat of his. He was thinking about the stand-how it had developed, thisyear as well as an idea, in his mind for a long time now.

"I think I've always had avision of what it could be, from the first time I met the woman in Astoria," hesays. "Then, my imagination kind of began to run away. I started envisioningthis holy tree stand. I think my vision is slowly forming."

"What better way toexperience the world than selling something as universal as a Christmastree-something you can all relate to? It's a great common ground."

He cracks an egg open intothe skillet with his gloved hands.

"I don't think Greg seesthat. See, a part of me that Greg is probably totally out of touch with is thecamping and the wilderness experience, which has been a huge influence in mylife. 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 thesegiant vast open spaces and knowing that you're the only one there, it's anincredible feeling."

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

"You can be in theAdirondacks or in Colorado. You can stand at a point and look 360-degrees andyou 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 thesame thing and you see nothing but the opposite. It is completely covered inman-made buildings. Everything is man made, even the parks."

He piles the egg and bacononto 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 socool about this place, it's a total paradox. These two worlds clash: you gotthe 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 fewblocks away on Driggs Avenue. He had some good conversations with those guysand it turned out one of them was friends with an artist who might beinterested in helping Adam with his mural idea.

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

It's the end of theirsecond 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 todrive over to pick it up.

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

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

"You're always kind of onthe 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 excitedthey 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 feedoff of that."

"But no one is going togive you that energy if you don't run a good looking stand," he notes. "Ifyou're stand is sad, the people won't be happy and you're not going to behappy. It's just sort of going to be a sad sight. So that's why I want to keepit like a tight ship."

That's what makes it anadventure-the reciprocal relationship: the effort of making the stand great,the reactions of the people who visit, and the high energy that Adam feeds offthat keeps him going. It was a way of being in the world. It was what he livedfor.

Thyra meets Adam at thedoor 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 winterwonderland scene. Pines decorated in colored garlands give way to asnow-covered path with footprints leading back to the water in the distance,where the skyline pokes through. A bright star hangs over the Empire StateBuilding.

"Do you like it?" Thyraasks. Her black pants are smeared in various colors of paint. She hasn't beengiven 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 namewrong," she says, pointing to a banner at the very top: Greg's QualityChristmas Trees. Just like the tags. "I almost wrote, 'Greg's Finest QualityChristmas Trees.'"

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

"You got my pancakes inthere," Adam says. "That's awesome." He'd requested them-just pancakes. Whodoesn't like pancakes?

They carry the paintingoutside and strap it to the car. Back at the stand, everyone loves it almost asmuch as Adam. Almost: he keeps staring at it, wide smile on his face, like theboy who got exactly what he wanted for Christmas. He excitedly clears away theknickknacks on the table-lights, fake Poinsettias, a basket full of coloredpinecones-and mounted it. A perfect fit.

He steps back and marvels.Willie and Corrie turn to take care of customers interested in a tree. Adamcan't stop admiring it.

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