I have often said that the world doesn't need another bonsai book, nor does it need another article on collecting. I can't provide a list of necessaries for digging. You'll find out when you get to the site what you should have brought and such information learned at high cost will serve you better than any specific excavational machinery I might offer. However, over the nightmare years my collection has grown to several hundred trees, most of which came from collected stock. But along the way, something happened.

Collecting has always fascinated bonsaiers. The first thing the lately initiated hear is that really great bonsai can be had for the mere digging of a Saturday afternoon. And every potential eccentric, eyes glowing in their beady slits, sees him or herself standing in front of the Bonsai Hall of Fame donating his collected tree, while a high school band plays and red, white and blue bunting flutters.

I recall now and again in those surrealistic moments before sleep how I first collected the then elusive collected tree. I thought that if I scoured the puckerbrush long enough, if I searched the phalanxes of Christmas tree nurseries, (I even thought Christmas tree farms were really just "natural" trees a mere gene or three removed from the wild), or if I could just nab one of the pines that spot the Pennsylvania Turnpike before and after Breezewood, I would be content. But whenever I saw a prospect, a trooper seemed stationed at every tree eminently diggable. I did overcome my intimidation by fascists and grabbed a few cones once, but they never came up. Of course, now I know they didn't germinate. The proper terms make me feel better, and less stupid, but no more successful. But the seeds were collected, weren't they? And collecting is the word.

Back to the books: I always liked the countless illustrations showing a perfect root ball being removed from the perfect hole, not a root damaged, no crumbling soil, the burlap then molded flawlessly to the ball like a brown fibrous gift package. Reality can be so cruel. In my experience too many times I thought I had just such an ovoid jewel, only to find that the best roots were those of a blackberry bush. Another of the finds proved to be the alien dandelion root that had sired every yellow flower in the county; while a third produced the most noxious wild strawberry since Ingemar Bergman, and alas, so few tree roots that I thought I heard the tree shriek like a mandrake. It died. But then, as a florist friend once said, "So what; everything dies", thereby giving reams of information only suspected till now.

Despite all this fol and de rol, collecting pines got me started and from which I found first success, if success can be said to take twenty or thirty years to satisfy. But along the way to the grave I've watched some truly enlightened diggers make my efforts appear pale and wan.

One friend dug probably the finest deciduous literati ever seen, only to discover it was poison Ivy. Both he and the tree broke out together. Another time a friend and I dug some enchanted woody-stemmed perennials along a service road in Tennessee. What wonders! To discover later that it made a lousy bonsai and that it grew unchecked in the fields around my house. We named it "Topsy".

Club digs provide entertainment as well as archaeological experience not found in other disciplines. On one such occasion the tree I dug died, but everyday must show some profit. As I filtered through the soil looking for roots belonging to the tree, I found a flat washer, two nails, and a horse shoe. I couldn't have had better luck if I had dug unkempt shrubs at a race track. My club tried to dig crab apples once. I had watched the growth in a field on my way to school sort of progress over twenty years. The stunted quality the trees possessed should have told me something. The soil was the repository for all the rocks dragged off the road when the W.P.A. built it in 1935... or was it '36?

Concerning clubs, I hesitate to be pedantic, but the occasion can use it. Always research the area to be dug. In late March or early April with the wind whistling up your pant legs, even the most crazed digger becomes testy when the area fails to produce really good trees with little if any effort.

Which brings to mind that all trees are not always able to be dug. No matter how good the specimen appears, after an hour or two of exasperated prying at rocks, enthusiasm droops and I admit I am beaten. Rocks have thwarted me on the big digs too. I had been panting my way through Colorado, wavering between eight and nine thousand feet when I glimpsed a mounded, cascading juniper that in my lunacy appeared to have been put there just for me! I snapped into action: shovel, bars, both pry and crow attached the mountain, but it wasn't good judgement. Above the surface the trunk twisted like a medieval dragon, and the dead branches couldn't have been better positioned if they had been glued on. As I removed layer after layer of rocks, the trunk failed to produce a single root and it seemed to get smaller, like a giant carrot. After uncovering two feet of straight underground trunk without even being able to cause the tree to vibrate when I struck it with my fist, I gave up. But I figured, why should I be the onty person to be thrilled by this arborescent frustration? I styled out each descending foliage cloud, then stood back, admiring my work. It is still there, waiting for someone to ground layer it, but that is another story.

Always on the prod for potential digging sites, I found a stand of beautiful wild American plums in a field near what was to become a park. Naturally enough a local patrolman stopped me from digging even the smallest seedling, saying I would be "screwing up" (I thought ruining would have been a better word) the area to be developed. The following winter the trees were bulldozed and a parking lot for the new bowling alley removed any interest I ever had in the site.

My worst experience occurred when I dug a shaggy arbor vitae in Canada, thus allowing me to be called an "international" bonsai collector. The particulars are long, arduous and ugly, but when I got back to Ohio I noticed a small birds nest back among the dead branches, spent needles, bits of moss. How neat! Nestled in the bird's nest was not a bird or even eggs, but a curled-up garter snake. It was too much nature for one day. Its beady eyes looked terror-stricken, but I suspect they merely reflected mine. Collecting trees is one thing; reptiles, quite another, teeth or no. I've been told by locals that garter snakes don't climb; I wish I had known that before I lost control of my autonomic nervous system. The tree still lurks over on one side of the garden, but I've never felt like training it or even working on it.

After all these fits and starts, I've had some success; therefore, I've concluded a few truths: never pick up the newly-dug tree by the trunk when removing the tree from the hole. Usually you will find out how few roots are present and such information can destroy confidence as well as one's concentration, both of which are essential to successful collecting.

Also, a neatly dug tree is a viable tree. Digging a tree like a Crusader hacking at Saracens only produces dead Saracens and tired Crusaders. Finally, never let digging a tree interfere with sleeping or resting. In fact, find an eccentric digger (a redundancy) and pay him to dig; if the tree dies, it was the digger's fault; if it lives, concoct a story so outrageous no one would dare doubt its veracity.