I think once you start practicing bonsai and once bonsai gets inside you, you’ll never look at trees the same again. Because you start realizing this magnificent microcosm that’s happening inside every tree.

And you see similarities to trees and people. If you think abstractly enough, you can draw a direct correlation between almost everything a human being does and everything a tree does. Trees are people, almost virtually identical. We need all but two essential elements, that’s all that differentiates a tree and a human being. Two essential elements, otherwise a tree and a human being need exactly the same thing.

“I think once you start practicing bonsai and once bonsai gets inside you, you’ll never look at trees the same again.”

You know, time plays a tremendous role in human beings in terms of our character and our personality. You know when we’re young, we’re very sharp, maybe we see in black and white, maybe we’re rambunctious, high-energy. As you get older, maybe you lose some of that energy, some of that pizzazz. Maybe you become a little bit more able to step back and think about things.

When you start to look at the way time impacts a tree its very similar. Scars that looked very artificial when they were first created start to look natural as they weather and they age and they become a part of the tree that naturally occurred as far as that tree’s concerned. You can’t duplicate that. You can’t add bark to a tree and have it look natural. You can’t take away the tool marks and have it look like it was never artificially done, that’s something only time can create.

Respect is probably at the most fundamental level of being able to do bonsai well. And doing bonsai well doesn’t mean being able to make a beautiful tree, it means being able to cultivate a healthy tree through all of the different processes that bonsai involves.

If you don’t respect the fact that life and death is a very real part of the creative process with bonsai, and maybe the one thing that really separates it and differentiates it from any other media that art can be created from – if you don’t respect that line than you don’t have anything in the end except for a big dead tree. And what if that tree is 1000 years old? You know, we might be here for 80 years, 90 if we’re lucky, 100 if we’re really out of the ordinary—that tree has been here for 1000 years, do you have the right to not respect that? I don’t think so.

I think there are ways to create a bonsai well. But I don’t know if there are ways to create a bonsai right. You always still have to fall back on the fundamental concepts of horticulture, are you giving the tree what it needs? And then from the design perspective, are you respecting the visual boundaries of design? Are you creating something that is going to be beautiful? Are the lines beautiful? Is the form beautiful? Is the balance what it needs to be for that tree to be visually appealing? That’s creating bonsai well.  Creating bonsai right, I don’t think it exists.

Meet Travis Winn, an American who traveled to China for the first time 15 years ago to join his dad on a first descent of the Headwaters of the Salween River in Tibet. On that first trip Travis realized that most Chinese citizens had no way to get out and experience free-flowing rivers. And later he learned that at the rate these rivers were being dammed, very few people would ever have a chance to see the rivers in their pristine and natural state. Risking his mental and physical health, Travis continues to strive toward his personal goal to bring the Chinese people closer to their rivers.