America’s first homegrown bonsai exhibition and competition will showcase 70 trees from across the country.
An hour north of Portland, on a hillside overlooking the Columbia River, I’m strolling between rows of bonsai trees. Some curl wildly out of their ceramic pots, like flailing Tolkien creatures. Others reveal surreal green tufts of foliage atop dead, sun-bleached bark. My tour guide, Ryan Neil, explains that many of these tiny trees are hundreds of years old, coaxed over years and years into grotesque, alien, intentional shapes with cuttings, wires, and simple sunlight.
