Bonsai: A miniature display of fall foliage

Our Connor Knighton now with a small story about some small wonders. Most leaf peepers are concerned with individual leaves. Those hunting for peak fall color go in search of vibrant hillsides of oranges, yellows, reds. But with all that foliage, you might miss the trees for the forest. That's why there are those who believe autumn is best enjoyed at eye level. You know, bonsai has this really great quality of personalizing trees. Usually when we are engaging with a tree, they're much taller than us. We're at the base of one, usually looking up and kind of can't fully take in the entirety of the tree, especially if it's in a forest context. And so what bonsai does is it really brings a tree down to our level. Aaron Packard is the curator of the Pacific Bonsai Museum in Federal Way, Washington. The fall season is really special in the bonsai world. I say fall color is kind of like the reward for all of the hard work you had to put in in the summer. Packard and his staff spend all year caring for the collection, a meticulous process of pruning and wire work, all done on a miniature scale. So bonsai is essentially the cultivation of a tree in a container. So bonsai, those two Japanese characters basically mean the tree in a pot. Can the bonsai process be applied to any type of tree? Yeah, so bonsai, many people think they're a type of tree, and so these are normal trees. I jokingly say that they don't know they're little. These trees are just normal trees doing their normal tree-like things. Well, not quite normal. Since the growth of a bonsai is guided, the trees often end up looking better than their full-size counterparts. They transform into living works of art, ones which have captivated other artists. When I first started taking these photos, I didn't tell a soul about them. You know, I was concerned that this work is so different aesthetically in every way than all my other work. I was worried like, are photo editors going to see this and be like, he's the bonsai guy now, he's not the portrait guy, maybe I'm not going to hire him anymore. Stephen Voss is an in-demand DC-based photographer. His subjects have ranged from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump. But to avoid burnout, he turns to bonsai, training his lens on the collection at the National Arboretum. You know, I was looking for outlet, and I don't know exactly how bonsai popped into my head, except that I thought, oh, this is a subject that will not move, that will not run out after five minutes, and that will give me all the time with no complaints. Voss can spend hours photographing a single tree. When you're photographing a person, I assume a lot of it is trying to capture the personality of your subject. Do you feel like you're doing the same thing with the bonsai? Absolutely. These trees, these trees have remarkable personality. You know, they really reward sort of these long, slow looks that that personality is revealed. But when you're looking at the tree, I think you're not only seeing the personality of the tree, but you're seeing the personality of the person who shaped that tree. Voss has created a whole book of bonsai. He found that spending time with the trees helped shape his own personality. Their stillness, their different conception of time. They're not running for re-election. They're not running for re-election, and the perspective that gives me, it, you know, it quiets me. This is about five years ago, and something I learned when I was photographing these trees in the fall is that the chlorophyll sort of blots out their actual color, but this is the true color of the tree. Once it loses its chlorophyll... Unfortunately, this year, politics has intruded on Voss's escape from politics. Due to the government shutdown, the National Arboretum has been closed for more than a month, which makes this the first fall in more than a decade he hasn't been able to see the changing leaves. Maybe it sounds crazy, but like, these trees are living things that are changing, and being connected to that change and understanding it and observing it is a meaningful thing to me.