Sounds of punching clay on a table filled the air in the Wrangell District’s National Forest office garage. Between throwing the lump of gray clay on the table, Claire Froelich kneaded into it, as it’s part of the process to making clay from some of Wrangell’s mud for this year’s Capitol Christmas Tree ornaments.
“I’m letting them dry out overnight,” she said. “It’s a pretty messy process too.”
Froelich works with the U.S. Forest Service in Wrangell and is an interpretation and environmental education specialist. She’s been very busy with the clay since she’s trying to meet the quota for making ornaments for a 74-foot Sitka spruce that will be this year’s Capitol Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C. It’s coming from federal lands near Wrangell in the Tongass National Forest. Each year, the Architect of the Capitol, a legislative branch, chooses the D.C. tree from different regions throughout the United States.
The only other time an Alaskan tree went to D.C. was in 2015, from the Chugach National Forest.
Froehlich is part of the core team that plans what goes into making this year’s Capitol Christmas Tree possible. A huge part of her role is making the ornaments. In fact, Alaskans across the state are also contributing by making homemade ornaments.
It takes almost a month to produce the clay
Froelich takes a break to let the clay harden, which she said takes about three to four weeks for the process – she constantly has to filter out large stones and water using old screens and pillowcases. She also found dangerous objects she had to pull out, like rusty nails.
“You just kind of want to smash it,” she said. “It has little hard parts to it too.”
She said she basically crushes everything up on a canvas so it’s a uniform pace.
“I’m making like the most dense bread.”
“As you keep on (working through it) it almost dries it out and pulls out a lot of the moisture and then it starts sticking together more,” Froehlich said. “Then you just keep on doing that.”
As she worked through it, patting the clay like bakers do with dough, it starts taking shape and becomes formidable.
“It doesn’t look like a lot, but they’re pretty heavy,” Froehlich said. “That one’s probably 25 pounds and back breaking. I’m making like the most dense bread.”
Alaskans surpassed the quota
Communities throughout Alaska have contributed to making handmade ornaments for the D.C. tree. Froelich said they were hoping for 12,000, but over 13,000 have been made – more than they expected. Two thousand of them are coming from Wrangell.
“The goal is to have a larger presence with decorations, including tree skirts and ornaments and stories related to the tree that we can share through the tour and in D.C., being from Wrangell,” she said.
A lot of what she’s done is at the schools – hauling the clay from classroom to classroom so the students can design them. On one particular spring day, she instructed fifth graders to make a circular ornament about the size of their palms.
“In second grade, we had some kids who made faces, so with noses, eyes, mouth that was protruding out,” Froehlich said. “We had some people make like a Starbucks cup because they were wearing the Starbucks green, you know. So there are a bunch of different ones.”
Fifth graders Tegan Kuntz and Piper Buness worked on flattening balls of clay out. I asked them what it smells like.
“Like pennies and dirt almost,” Buness said.
“It smells like dirt,” said Kuntz
Talira Booker said she wants to design a mythical creature in her ornament.
“I’m probably gonna sketch out a dragon or something, since it’s my favorite mythical,” she said. “Or a wolf.”
As the class continues making ornaments, some have food in mind, like Henry Meschnark who repeatedly tossed the clay up in the air while singing, “Mama mia pizzeria…”
“We’re making pizza,” he said.
One hundred forty Alaskan communities will be represented in D.C.
On top of the clay ornaments, Froelich said she’s gathering donated fishing lines and buoys, which represent Southeast and will be used as garlands and ornaments.
“They were a little green and stiff, so a little nasty,” she said. “So I power washed them, got off all of the old paint and algae. They were no longer stiff with salt water and they all looked bright again.”
Tree “cookies” are another ornament that will decorate the tree. Basically, they’re slices of tree branches and trunks.
“We’re a big forest, so cutting some tree cookies and different sizes and stuff is super easy for a lot of different people to prep and be able to implement in their communities with events and stuff,” Froelich said.
She’s also worked with high school T3 tech clubs from around the state to add a little snazz to the decorations – with laser cutters.
T3 Alliance – Teaching Through Technologies – teaches high school students STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) skills.
“About 140 different communities will be represented through this and they’re going to laser cut each village, town and community,” Froehlich said. “One of those 140 communities with specific and detail of each one.”
Other ornaments were made during Wrangell’s annual Bear Fest. The high school shop class made metal bear cutouts that people could paint and decorate.
“It’s really inspirational to have something that is calming in our wild world.”
People visiting Bear Fest gathered together in a large room at The Nolan Center, Wrangell’s convention center, to paint and decorate the bear ornaments. Lots of paints and brushes were on a table for people to use.
At the festival, the room is filled with people, but. . . it’s quiet. A blow dryer can be heard in the background as people dry the paint on their ornaments. One of the organizers is Joan Sargent.
“It’s just amazing how people just sit down and they focus and they just draw,” she said. “It’s a quiet moment for them. It’s really, really inspirational to have something that is calming in our wild world.”
Colin McGinn was visiting his family here in Wrangell from England. He’s working on two bears.
“One’s a wooden bear that’s just got googly eyes put on it and the other one’s a stainless steel bear, which I believe was cut out by the school with the laser cutter,” he said.
McGinn asked the young man next to him, “Was it you?”
“So I’m sitting next to a young guy who’s aged 16, who did the laser cutting,” McGinn said.
“All summer long I’ve been cutting out all the Capitol Christmas Tree ornaments…”
And that 16-year-old is Benjamin Houser. It was a process to cut the aluminum ornaments out with the laser cutter. He said they had to insert an image into a computer-aided design program, trace it out then send it to a laser engraver down at the high school shop. Then they put the aluminum sheet in the machine which plasma cuts out each individual piece.
“These had a lot of sharp corners because the heat folds in the side,” he said. “We had to grind down each one so it was smooth and safe for everybody to paint on.”
He said the process has been long and fun.
“All summer long I’ve been cutting out all the Capitol Christmas Tree ornaments and all the wooden ornaments that are here,” Houser said.
“…making sure they’re not weapons or weird political statements…”
After all the ornaments have been made, Froelich said that she spent time in Anchorage with others at the Chugach Region Office hooking each ornament that passes the quality control test.
“Going through 1000s and 1000s of ornaments and putting hooks and doing quality checks and making sure they’re not weapons or weird political statements or, you know, just ornaments,” she said.
The tree will be harvested later this month. After its first celebration in Wrangell, it will venture off on a whistle-stop tour across the Lower 48. The first town will be Ketchikan, as it’s barged down to Washington state. It will then be in a veterans parade in Pocatello, Idaho. It will also visit a historic farm in Utah. In total, the tree will stop in 11 communities across America while it makes its way to Washington, D.C. for the holidays.
