I experienced sticker shock when I visited a nursery to buy a holiday tree this year. A 10-foot tree would have cost me $370 if I'd gone ahead and bought it. I remembered being happy as a child in the ...

This essay is part of Finding Beauty, a series on discovering joy in the unexpected. Growing up, I had an enormous pine tree in my backyard in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. It stretched above the roof of my two ...