Wandering with a friend the other day on a long walk around a lake and through a somewhat nondescript public park in Oakland, I stumbled upon a small unassuming bonsai garden down a small unassuming path in an otherwise riotously wild garden overgrown with flowers and dotted with community plots. Two older bearded men in large straw sunhats paused their conversation to welcome us and then left us to walk around among the tiny trees. A pigmy pomegranate in bloom just in front of the entry was among my very favorites I saw that day, but towards the back sitting just behind their small unassuming little descriptions were two true treasures.
I am in awe of bonsai trees because many of them – particularly those that are older and have been “in training,” as one says in the bonsai community, for a longer time – tend to look almost like pieces of living driftwood. All gray aged wood and smooth lines and yet they are very much alive with little tufts of pine needles or precious green leaves or even lush blossoms emerging from seemingly dormant branches. That is, no doubt, why bonsai is an art. Its trimming and training techniques are passed down by practitioners through traditional lineages that stretch back literally hundreds if not thousands of years. Which brings me back to the pair of ancient trees sitting on unassuming little platforms behind their unassuming little placards.
The first – a tufted pine – was estimated to be four hundred years old. Think about that for a second. Four hundred years. Think about the amount of change and time and life that have passed under the bridge of posterity during that period. Some long dead someone started “training” that particular tree in the sixteen hundreds, as in the seventeenth century! And it was cared for and dutifully passed down by generations of stewards so that it could travel over from Japan to be displayed in the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco and then somehow arrive here in this small unassuming garden in Oakland where it sat before me.
How staggering to think about. All of the lives that that tree had witnessed – all of the change. I found myself wishing that I could sit down with that old man pine and ask him to tell me stories about his long and varied life, about what he thinks about fondly when he looks back over his time in this realm. I often think similar things when I look up at old trees in the forest, the key word being “up.” Usually, the trees in question are almost unfathomably tall with their top branches stretching way up to the sky at altitudes only frequented by birds. They too have lived long lives, but they have done so in one place with roots stretching deep down into the dark earth where they remain: Rooted.
This little tree by contrast was a traveler, a visitor, and a fearless immigrant with a sophisticated urbane soul. He had crossed the ocean on a ship perhaps a streamer. He grew up in feudal Japan and had no doubt been at one time admired by samaras and geishas and maybe even warlords and kings. I know that a great many of Japanese emperors appreciated the art of bonsai. It was so incredible to consider. Mind boggling even to think about, to try and wind back the clock. This tree was also appreciated by thousands upon thousands of people at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, during a time when San Francisco was on full display and the world was just beginning to get smaller with the completion of the Panama Canal. It is estimated that over two million people attended the 1915 exposition and no doubt a great many of them admired this lovely little tree. And now he sat there before me almost a hundred and one years later with even more stories to tell.
There are so many things I would love to know, to ask. What has it all been like? What has stuck out as the most memorable moments of your long and varied life? Do you miss having deep roots? Do you get on well with the taller trees? Do you miss your life in Japan? What was that life even like? Who took care of you? What were they like? How did you like them? Do you have a favorite? So many questions, so much life, such an incredible being – this dwarf pine on its plywood pedestal.
Just down the path was another miraculous living bookmark in history. An oak tree this time, which delicate leaves fanning out from its gnarled bark. This little tree, also from Japan, had apparently been given to Abraham Lincoln as a diplomatic gift. Read that again for me and let it settle in. This tree met Abraham Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln. Wait what? I nearly fell over. The little tree who met Lincoln. What an unassuming miracle to happen upon in free bonsai garden tucked away behind a chain link fence across the parking lot from a public walking path on a brackish lake. It is just mind-boggling if you really take the time to think about it.
One of my favorite things to do when I lived in DC was to run from wherever I happened to be living at the time – most recently from behind the Capital – down the mall to visit Lincoln. I liked to run there at night when the monuments are all lit up and during peak tourist season are often awash with the low din of high school tour groups and other out of town visitors milling about. There is a place I like to sit nestled into one of the round grooves in the columns outside where I could rest before making the run home. It is where I would go to think, to take stock of my life and consider my many blessings.
You look out at the reflecting pool with the Washington monument at the other end and the Capitol glittering in the distance and long ribbons of trees in varying states of dress or undress depending on the season. It is a very special place. Before I leave I always pop inside to visit Lincoln. To send up a silent prayer of gratitude for all he did for us and for all that he represents in us: Our better nature. All that to say, he is important to me, both symbolically and otherwise and his monument has been a place that I go to find solace and space for contemplation and to think that this miniature oak was his charge in a way is just incredible.
The oak who met Lincoln. I mentioned it to the garden’s twin bearded caretakers as we were leaving to their clear amusement. One of them gave me a sideways half smile said he had never really considered it and asked it I was a poet. “Yes, in a way,” I replied before we said goodbye and wandered out turning back to the modern din of the walking path that lay just outside of the garden of tiny giants.
