{"id":9614,"date":"2015-11-23T09:02:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T17:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/lutz-spruce-from-alaska-arrives-on-capitol-lawn\/"},"modified":"2015-11-23T09:02:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T17:02:54","slug":"lutz-spruce-from-alaska-arrives-on-capitol-lawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/lutz-spruce-from-alaska-arrives-on-capitol-lawn\/","title":{"rendered":"Lutz spruce from Alaska arrives on Capitol lawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE\u2014 <\/strong>The Capitol Lawn is now home to a Lutz spruce from Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first Capitol Christmas tree to come from the country\u2019s 49th state, The Alaska Public Radio Network reported.<\/p>\n<p>Cut from the Chugach National Forest almost a month ago, the tree was taken by ship from Anchorage to Tacoma, Washington. Trucker John Schank of Fairbanks drove the tree 4,000 miles across the country on a flatbed, accompanied by law enforcement and Forest Service personnel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ve been with me from Day 1,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout them clearing the lanes for me to make these turns, it would\u2019ve been a real tough job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nonprofit organization Choose Outdoors and the U.S. Forest Service put a tree from a different national forest on the Capitol Lawn each year.<\/p>\n<p>Bruce Ward leads the nonprofit, and said this year\u2019s tree harvest was blessed by Kenaitze elder John Ross.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn eagle actually circled the tree before it was cut, and he said afterwards he asked the Great Spirit to let him know if it was OK to cut this tree,\u201d Ward recalls. \u201cAnd the message he got was \u2018If the eagle lands on the tree you\u2019re not to cut it.\u2019 And so, I\u2019m kind of praying so he doesn\u2019t land on the tree, right? Because we\u2019ve gone through a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ward\u2019s organization collected corporate donations totaling $650,000 to fund the trip. There were more than a dozen tree-related events along the way.<\/p>\n<p>Soldotna fifth-grader Anna DeVolld will light the tree at a ceremony Dec. 2. The spruce will be adorned with 2,000 ornaments made by Alaska children, residents and tribe members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE\u2014 The Capitol Lawn is now home to a Lutz spruce from Alaska. This is the first Capitol Christmas tree to come from the country\u2019s 49th state, The Alaska Public Radio Network reported. Cut from the Chugach National Forest almost a month ago, the tree was taken by ship from Anchorage to Tacoma, Washington. Trucker [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":9615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9614"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}