Photography by the Columbia Daily Tribune
Every year in Columbia, Mo., Will Treelighter (a.k.a. Randy Fletcher) spends hour after hour wrapping tens of thousands of lights around a single tree, carefully covering every last twig in a radiant array of color. The resulting optical effect is a sparkling nighttime rainbow that’s deserving of its name, the Magic Tree (magic-tree.org).
Starting in the ’90s, Treelighter would decorate an apple tree in his yard, but eventually, the traffic became more than his neighbors could bear. So the Magic Tree moved to The Village of Cherry Hill, a neighborhood where the crowds are welcome. This year, he’s taking on a larger tree, one that might require as many as 80,000 lights.
He also distributes fliers with his own inspirational religious message, so that “hopefully, the Magic Tree will contribute to an evolution of spirituality in humanity on the whole.”
