I've placed faith in geography // To hold you in my memory
Gratitude to thriving cherry trees that traveled from my home country
If you ask me, nothing else screams SPRING louder than Sakura, cherry blossoms. I’m sure the majority of folks from Japan will agree. Seeing these pale pink flowers blooming en masse outside of Japan brings me some unparalleled joy.
The first "proper" cherry blossoms I saw in the U.S. were located in the Tidal Basin of the nation's capital. This was a couple of months after I transferred from a two-year college on the West Coast to the University of Maryland. I remember how these trees, brought here from Japan a long time ago, gave me a sense of pride and optimism.
(Btw - I'm so thankful for old film cameras' date imprinting feature. Without it, I would not have known what year the photo was taken.)
A little history lesson from the National Park Service:
February 14, 1912: 3,020 cherry trees from twelve varieties were shipped from Yokohama on board the S.S. Awa Maru, bound for Seattle. Upon arrival, they were transferred to insulated freight cars for the shipment to Washington. D.C.
March 26, 1912: 3,020 cherry trees arrived in Washington, DC.
Some places I have lived since 1993 didn't have cherry trees like these - New Mexico, where I spent some winter and spring months last year, for example. But we are an American family with Japanese heritage to carry on. After moving to Seattle in 2012, we established cherry blossom viewing trips (hanami) as a family tradition. We have been doing hanami yearly at the University of Washington's "The Quad", except Covid Year 1 and 2. Some of these trees are nearly 90 years old, and their size is quite impressive, even for those from Japan.
It seems cherry blossom viewing is becoming increasingly popular in the Seattle area every year. While this complicates the logistics of getting to popular viewing locations (it's hard to avoid the crowds!), it is a testament to the universal value of beautiful flowers with a short blooming season.
I am a transplant from Japan - and so are all these trees. They have not only survived but thrived on this literal foreign soil, so far from their native land - so that gives me a lot of hope.
This is why I get so sad when mature, beautiful cherry trees in the region become victims of clear-cutting housing development. When it happened so close to my suburban home, it hit my psyche hard. You would think such beautiful flowering trees should increase the value of the property/neighborhood and add characters, but the developers couldn't care less, apparently. In the example pictured below, the developer could have just built homes behind that fence and left the trees alone, but they didn't. The clear-cutting development seems so violent. I am crying for these trees because we are both from the same distant place.
All photos by ©Mapchan
P.S. I am a crazy Death Cab for Cutie lady. I often find inspirations for my writing in their songs and intend to pull my blog post titles from their lyrics whenever I can! If you haven’t guessed it by now, this post’s title is a line from Gold Rush.