Musings...
Many, many years ago, I met a local jeweler and shop owner who discovered the marketing potential of an unknown local turquoise colored pectolite stone which he named after his daughter Larissa and the sea (mar). His name was Miguel Mendez. At that time, he was becoming bored with his trade and offered to sell me his store located in a thriving shopping center in the middle of Santo Domingo. It was my understanding that it wasn’t that he had lost interest in jewelry, but a new passion had overtaken him, actually two. One was cockfighting and raising birds for the sport, and the other was bonsai. I was not lost to the fact that it was very unusual for a person to hold in his heart such two aesthetically divergent objects of interest. I had no interest in the birds, but I was overtaken by a fascination for his bonsai trees. I visited Miguel with certain recurrence, mostly as an excuse to contemplate and bask in the company of his trees. I noticed the trees had a mysterious effect on me, something I couldn’t pin down, but definitely therapeutic. Miguel wasn’t selling his trees, he was collecting them. I asked him where he got them. He told me he had people all over the island searching for them, in every nick and cranny. He had spread the word to campesinos and instructed them on how to spot them in the countryside, exactly what he was after: natural dwarfs. There was one particular tree that cast a spell on me, a three-hundred-year-old-looking tamarind, not more than eighteen inches tall, with a weathered twisted trunk, branches, tiny leaves and fruit…
Traveling throughout the countryside, I have stumbled upon a few ancient trees, which size suggests they are several hundred years old. Some of theses trees are in pristine condition because of their remote locations, while others show the effects of negligence and or thoughtlessness due mostly to their encroaching human environment. I would like to share the location of these ancient trees, and encourage others to do the same. Maybe create an inventory, with pictures, descriptions, including their exact gps location? Maybe we could lobby the government authorities for a specific legal protection status for each individual tree, as national monuments or whatever, further than what current species protection and deforestation laws establish?
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