What I did one Saturday, part two

The taxi had dropped me at a traffic light on the main avenue, next to a restaurant and a nievería. While I could tell it was going to be a hot day, it was too early for a nieve, or ice cream. Looking across the two-lane avenue I saw a wide, raised and landscaped walkway. Once the light turned red, I crossed the avenue and ascended the steps.

Block letters on the wall of a round building to my right advertised an artisan’s market and a stone fountain stood nearby, but I had no idea where to find El Tule. I saw no sign pointing out the correct direction, nor did the few people on the walkway seem to be headed in a particular direction. My taxi, like virtually every one I had seen, advertised its destination as simply El Tule, as if the eponymous tree was all there was to the town—but where was it?

I knew it was no bonzai. Both my Mexican family and my guidebook had informed me that it is one of the oldest trees, if not living object, on earth. As such, both impressed upon me its enormity, though, as my guidebook pointed out, it is fatter than it is tall—which I figured was fortunate because I think few trees could measure up to the grove of California sequoias visited this summer. In fact, what I heard of the tree reminded me more of the Stanislaus Forest’s ancient Bennett Juniper, which my mom and I had reached after an agonizingly slow drive in her mini along a pothole-studded road. Now it crossed my mind that this tree might require a similar trek.

Nevertheless, I forgo asking anyone. Hoping to spare myself an embarrassing exchange—‘Can you direct me to El Tule?’ ‘Yea, it’s right there.’—I decided to walk to the town’s central church for a quick visit. At the gate—odd for a church—I said hello to the guard and read the posted sign. At the top it read simply: El Tule. I looked from the sign, to the church, to the shade on the ground and, for the first time, up into the branches of the enormous tree that occupied most of the church’s front grounds. Rather than a single organism, it was like a two-trunked pine in which fusion seemed to have occurred in reverse, with a whole grove of trees now existing as one. It was a Trumpalar of a tree and I had been practically under it the whole time.