Backcountry Bonsai 3/29/14

This ancient three-quarters-dead Limber pine (Pinus flexilis) is clinging for its life on Cusick Mountain in the southern part of Eagle Cap Wilderness in northeastern Oregon. I borrowed both photos in this post from Backcountry Bonsai.

Trees like this fascinate me. Obviously, it will never be a bonsai, but only someone stuck on bonsai without real appreciation of wild trees would care. BTW: such poor benighted souls exist (excluding present company of course). Rather than saying more, I’ll defer to our 26th President (TR) “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.” Then there’s this one by our 40th president (RR). “Trees, how many of ’em do we need to look at?” I think the latter quote was in reference to protecting ancient redwoods.

Following a digital trail. I found the two photos in this post at Backcountry Bonsai. But that’s not the whole story. Backcountry borrowed them from Ascending the Giants, which belongs to Gary Dielman who is credited with discovering the ancient tree according to Dr Chris Earle of Confiers.org.

A magnificent monster! At first glance I thought there’s a strange purple flower growing at the tree’s base. Turns out it’s a backpack that serves at least too functions: it provides a sense of scale, and it distracts from the beauty of the tree just a bit. I suppose it goes without saying that the yellow dots are flowers.