Literati tree

Bonsai in the Bunjin style. Hermetic monks who copied the style of how pines actually grow.

I sense that you're not interested in this. But I really like this guy, Peter Chan. An odd combination of Asian and British, he manages to avoid the typical rhotic speech impediment that characterizes  British English speakers and instead substitutes his own impediment with "th" phoneme. He cannot say the simplest sound to make. The sound that lispers use to substitute for the "s" sound they cannot make.

I uthed to lithp. Did I tell you thith before?

Here goeth. Thkip if you already heard thith.

One day in kindergarten my teacher thaid, "thay that again."

I athked, "thay what again?"

"What you jutht now thaid."

I thaid, "Here'th thome puthywillowth."

"Thay that again."

"Here'th thome puthywillowth.

"Thay that again."

"Here'th thome puthywillowth.

Thee thaid thankth.

And that wath that for five more yearth.

Until the fifth grade at Narimathu Middle Thchool. The French guy in the quonthet hut thaid "You need thpeech therapy."

And I'm all, what is thith guy a thychopath or what?

Whatever. It got me out of hith clath onth a week.

And there I was thinging "I'm a little teapot thort and thtout. Here'th my handle and here'th my thpout." And the woman taught me two wayth to thay "eth." It depended where you put the tip of your tongue, bent either up or down on the front teeth. It wath very difficult to thwitch to the new way to thay eth. I had to pick a way and thtick with it.

I wondered why didn't anyone mention thith earlier? It could have thpared me yearth of embarrathment.

And decadeth later I wondered why Obama didn't have to go to thpeach therapy. At leatht he wouldn't have thounded tho f'k'n gay.

Care to hear something funny? Mark Levin interviews Trump. It's standard Trump, nothing particularly stupendous. But before that Levin describes some guest on CNN who gets everything wrong legally about what the House is doing in relation to Trump and Trump's response. The guy slobbers his "es" phoneme and Mark Levin imitates him thereafter, and it's so startling hearing a serious speaker discussing a serious matter with exaggerated ridiculing speech impediment that it incapacitates you laughing. And he sticks with the form of ridicule the whole time, never letting up until he's done with the subject, a rather long time.  I never realized the guy is so hilarious.

But here's the thing about why I'm so interested in these bonsai trees. I heard them described as tree torture. There's something morally wrong with taking a fine ordinary tree and handicapping it so sorely just so that you can have a miniature version of a tree that would grow to full size if allowed. To tree huggers, that is a sin. Fixing them with wire, that is wrong.

Then one day I was taken to Yagee Mountain.

I'm not sure I'm spelling the name right. I could check but I don't feel like it.

Yagee was dean of Denver University Law School.

Then his son became dean of Denver University Law School.

The first Yagee made his real money during Prohibition. He defended bootleggers. One of the bootleggers couldn't pay him so instead gave him some land. It happened to be a mountain a bit west of Boulder.

That is where his son built a house.

Lightning struck the house and burned it down.

The son rebuilt on the same spot. Right onto live rock. The rock was actually inside the house. The rock was the floor of the living room and the walls of one the bathrooms. Otherwise a fairly ordinary second home.

It did not sit tippy top of the mountain. It was built on the side near the top. I only met the son Yagee twice, the second time at this house. Truly a fantastic party house. Yagee the son was a very old man at the time. Very close to death, and alcoholic besides. So his party was fairly staid and alcohol-oriented. Nonetheless there was a very large crowd up there that day. He knew a lot of people.

I joined a small group that hiked up a path to the tip of the mountain to an incredibly lovely spot. A little bit further and down on the other side a steady wind blew up the mountain and over it across rock walls. Pine trees took hold in the rock and struggled to grow and I was sitting there on natural grass examining the trees that surrounded me in the wind I realized I was in the middle of some twenty to thirty perfect little bonsai trees in their natural state. I saw with my own eyes where Chinese and Japanese people got this idea of cultivating tiny wind-swept trees, making the best of a sore situation.

I wanted one.

I examined their roots and followed them through the cracks in the rock walls and I realized the trees are part of the rock.They followed along the cracks. The roots were wide as the tree trunk.  It would be impossible to dislodge them without breaking apart the rock walls or cutting the roots severely. The roots creeped along like impossibly long snakes taking the shape of crags. If you managed to dislodge them without damaging the roots, an impossibility, you'd have a tiny tree that tried to grow outward but was whipped backward by continuous harsh wind and stunted to miniaturization with roots that ran for yards in all directions in wild firm shapes strong as the tree trunks and much MUCH larger than the tree itself. There would be no way to reassemble the roots into a bonsai pot. The roots must be destroyed in order to pull out the tree.

But there they were for the taking. A few dozen perfect bonsai specimens of very high quality and outrageous natural design. I resolved to just sit there and admire them. And that's why that scene is fixed in my memory. It was an amazing discovery. A veritable fortune in natural pine bonsai trees.