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Cancer is no match for the spirit of East Wenatchee 'Tree Guy'

By Rick Steigmeyer
The Wenatchee World




EAST WENATCHEE -- Ken Clarke said he moved to the Wenatchee Valley to die.

Six years later, he's very much alive and selling Christmas trees in the Big R Store parking lot in East Wenatchee.

He's set up his tree lot in a different place each of the last six years. But loyal customers figure out how to find him, attracted, he said, by his fresh "wetside" trees.

But it's likely that those people who have heard his story are attracted by his zest for life.

"I figure if I woke up, then it's a good day," said Clarke, who's known as "The Tree Guy."

Clarke isn't one to moan about problems. To see the athletic 49-year-old scurry around his lot of 250 fir trees gives no indication he's been battling cancer for several years. "People tell me I look good. That's because I'm not wiping out half my body to live."

Clarke said he decided to forego radiation and chemotherapy treatments when the cancer that had been in remission returned two years ago.

"I had 12 tumors on my brain at one time. Now, it's in my kidneys. So, it's working itself down and out," he said.

Clarke said the tumor he has now is actually on his adrenal gland, just above his kidneys. One of the side effects of the cancer is an increased flow of adrenaline that gives him lots of energy.

Clarke said he goes to doctors and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle for checkups, but has avoided the heavy-handed treatments that would change his quality of life.

He fought his brain cancer into remission while living in Boca Raton, Fla.

But doctors told him he would die without treatment. He found Wenatchee on the Internet. It looked like a good place to go to die. "I felt I had to go somewhere. Wenatchee was about as far away as I could get from Boca Raton," he said.

Clarke calls himself a ski bum, although he was a builder by trade in Michigan before cancer changed his life. He was attracted to the Wenatchee Valley after reading about local ski areas and the mountains, rivers and lakes that make the region great for four-season recreation.

"It seemed like a place that had everything. And it does."

When he's not selling Christmas trees, he volunteers for the Mission Ridge Ski Patrol; Chelan County Mountain Rescue; Together, for a Drug Free Youth; and local builders associations.

"I'm mainly working on getting myself well right now. I have good days and bad days," he said. Clarke said he maintains a healthy diet, drinks herbal teas and prays a lot.

"It's 90 percent attitude. The rest is what you put in you and prayer."

Strong physical energy helps the body repair itself, he believes, so he keeps on the go as much as possible.

Selling Christmas trees has turned out to be a good way to make some income and spread good will. He buys the trees and cuts them himself at a tree farm in Onalaska, near Chehalis, in Western Washington.

He said he gives several trees away each year to single mothers who are referred to him by local churches.

"If you do the giving, the getting comes," he said, adding he's looking forward to a happy, healthy Christmas.

"I think the economy this year might remind people that it's the gathering of the people around the tree, not the gifts beneath it, that counts."