Luka Ismailova

The mud squelched under my boots as I made my way up the slope, the scent of damp earth mingling with the sharp resin of fir trees. Racha’s forests always had a way of reminding me of my childhood in Tlughi, Georgia, even now, at 32. I’d grown up watching men climb these towering trees, their movements as graceful as dancers in a perilous performance. Now, I was one of them.

Beside me, Levan, a wiry 27-year-old with a limp that didn’t seem to slow him down, chatted about the latest village gossip. His phone, blaring some upbeat Georgian pop, swung loosely from his wrist. “You know,” he said, pausing to take a drag from his cigarette, “they say the seeds go to Europe for Christmas trees. Funny, huh? Trees we’ve never seen decorating homes we’ll never visit.”

We both worked as waiters most of the year, scraping by in the bustling city. But every fall, I returned here to earn extra money. The clearing came into view, a space carved out of the dense forest canopy. High above, cones rained down as climbers worked the branches. Levan pointed to a fir, its trunk wide and reaching skyward like a cathedral spire. “That one’s yours today,” he said with a grin.

I strapped on my harness and climbed, each step upward accompanied by the creak of the tree and the distant laughter of the women collecting cones below. The view from the top was breathtaking: the endless expanse of fir trees, the glint of Lake Shaori in the distance, the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus beyond. But there was no time to linger. I secured myself with a short rope and began pulling cones, their sticky resin coating my hands.

Later, as the sun dipped below the horizon, I thought about the seeds nestled in those cones. Soon, they’d travel thousands of kilometers, sprouting into Christmas trees that would brighten European living rooms. And while those families decorated their trees, I’d be back in Tbilisi, serving plates and pouring drinks. It was a strange connection, I thought, between my life here and the quiet joy those trees would bring. A fragile thread, but a thread nonetheless.