The Pygmy Forest

Just the name “Pygmy Forest” sounds enchanting. I expected to be greeted by elfin creatures like those who inhabited my childhood imagination. The book Paulus and the Acornmen by Jean Dulieu was a favorite of mine, and I half expected acornmen to be traipsing around carrying edible fungi on pine needle stretchers fashioned from spider webs. Or at least see artistically trimmed bonsai bushes dotting the landscape.

But the Pygmy Forest looks like a scrawny, scrubby place with soil so poor in nutrients that hundred-year-old trees have trunks the diameter of a hairbrush and barely rise above my shoulders. In fact, it takes so long for any soil to form—I’m not kidding, this topsoil is over a half million years old—that visitors must use a raised boardwalk to prevent harming its delicate surface.

Needless to say, I was underwhelmed. On top of that, I felt guilty for having that reaction. There are very few such ecosystems on earth and I just wasn’t seeing the inherent beauty in such a place. Until I took a closer look.

Okay, those tiny little pollen dispensers on the pine’s diminutive boughs were quite intriguing. And those wee white flowers with their pale pink stamens were rather pretty. The rhododendron seedpods beginning to form reminded me of miniature corn dogs on a carousel, which caused me to chuckle.

I noticed the pattern of a dying leaf along with its pebbly texture and dramatic color bands. It was pointing like an arrow, or a sideways exclamation point, suggesting: look around! A small tree trunk’s knot looked a bit like a female figure surrounded by cloud-like hair.

When I have specific expectations they are less likely to be met than when I open my mind to experience what is in front of me now, in this moment. All it took to appreciate the Pygmy Forest was a shift in my attitude—a reopening of my eyes to the secrets held within its borders. Perhaps Paulus and one of his acornmen were actually hiding under that fallen leaf…

All photos © Sondra Sula.