G. J. Kelly (jerrykel@msn.com)
Life was pretty good. I had a good job, was single, maybe not as physically active as I should have been, but not bad. I stayed quite busy between business and taking care of my cat ("Scruffey") and my apartment. I even found time to cook (I really like to cook) and even go on a date once in a while.
Then it happened. I met an Orchidist. Now, she didn't come right out and warn me. Oh no, she saved the flower thing until after I was already interested. When I came to pick her up for the second real date I noticed and mentioned the pretty blossoms in her kitchen. She thanked me for the compliment and casually noted that they were Orchids that she grew in a corner of her basement. So misleading was her tone that I smiled inwardly at the notion of her tossing a few seeds on a dirt floor in the corner of some dark, dank cellar and accidentally spawning these cute little pink and white flowers (kind of strange-looking roots, though). You see after--oh--three or four dates, we were on the phone and I suggested dinner at a new place on the East Side for Thursday or Friday. "Sorry, but not a chance!" she said. "I'm tied up for the weekend from Thursday on." Fool that I was, I began to wonder who the other guy was. So I said in a small voice that is usually quite disarming "Gee, I really would like to see you." She said "You can help if you want". "Sure, I'd love to... Ahh, help with what?" said I. "There's an Orchid show this weekend and I'm working Thursday and Friday setting up a display. You can help me Friday if you want." So I pictured some card tables with some little pink and white flowers on them and agreed immediately. Heck, what did I have to lose? I was really beginning to like this gal and besides I had never been to a flower show. Might be fun.
Well, on Friday afternoon I found myself saying a lot of things like; "Good Lord!", "What's all this black cloth for?" and "The WHOLE mall?". First, there were a lot of trips back and forth carrying things. Things like several boxes of rocks, boxes of some light-weight but skin-irritating "sheet moss," lighting poles, and on and on. Then, just when I was ready to take a break, there started a blur of activity. People began coming in bringing flowers. All kinds of flowers. Fat ones, long ones, purple ones, yellow ones. One pot looked like a bunch of wrong-colored bees flying in formation on sticks. Another plant looked like a bunch of yellow grapes hanging on its vine if you squinted at it or looked at it--like I did--with sheet moss in your eyes. A lot of the stuff they brought in had those funny-looking roots. Some stalks were growing up out of pod-like things that were reminiscent of some old sci-fi movies. As I knelt on bruised knees trying to arrange wet sheet moss so that it looked "natural" (who knows what "natural" sheet moss looks like?) with a lower back pain that started out as slightly distracting and was approaching the "mind-warping, shooting-dagger" pain level, my remaining vestiges of organized thought turned to the cause of my presence in this suburban tropical oasis. The woman of my dreams. In one last vain attempt to hold her interest, I asked "Which of these are Orchids?" She smiled a patronizing smile and replied "All of them!" "You mean all of the flowers in this exhibit are Orchids?" was my bewildered response. "No, all of the flowers in the mall are Orchids." Having taken several trips the length of the mall for buckets of water, I had done a little sightseeing. To regain some of my lost balance I struck back with "Oh really, what about that stuff in the glass jars that looks like chives? Surely that isn't Orchid material." (Boy I got her now.) "Those jars are called 'flasks' and each one represents several tens of germinated and sprouting seeds raised in a sterile atmosphere to protect the integrity of the breeding and limit disease," she said, just a tiny hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Well, the show turned out to be a great success for everybody. I met a surprising number of really interesting people and learned what I thought was a lot and turned out to be just a little about Orchids. I gave up trying to impress my "date" early in the weekend and discovered by late in the weekend that the Orchid kingdom was something more than interesting and so was she. After a couple more weeks and a couple more dates, she asked if I would like to accompany her on a nature hike. Well, I love backpacking and hiking. This trip was to view Orchids in bloom in natural settings in Michigan. I didn't know Michigan had wild Orchids. My first thought was that this trek might be pretty boring. I was beginning an interest in Orchids and continuing a growing interest in my hostess, but how much fun could a walk in the woods be with thirty people ages twenty to ninety? Aw, what the heck, if it will make her happy! I said "Sure, I'd love to go." (Here we go again!) All equipped with a preppie little knapsack, a bottle of water, my Minolta, jeans, tennis shoes and a polo shirt, we hop in the car. What was supposed to be 19 miles turns out to be 35 so we get there a little late. There is a group of about 30 people in casual attire standing next to a pavilion getting a lecture from a guy that looks like "Ranger Bob." I'm looking around curiously for "Ranger Bob's" wonder dog Spike when I catch the word "snake" in the lecture. So I decide to listen a little more closely. I quickly learn that a "fen" is a bog area of a swamp that is slightly alkaline and about standing water, root mats, 40 feet of muck, rattlesnakes, and if you fall don't take the person in front of you down with you. Please stay with the group so we won't lose you in 45 miles of almost impassable swamp. I think Ranger Bob's trying to impress the city folk and I resolve myself to a fairly boring morning. Off we go walking single file on a well-developed and marked trail. First stop: Ranger Bob points out a few local weeds, gives a brief description of the conservation area we are in and points out a turn in the trail that leads to some Sierra Club cross continent trail that we don't want to take on the way back cause it's not the way back. Stop Two: Bob gathers us by a little creek and pulls about 8 feet of stick up out of the apparently solid ground. He admonishes us all, "Don't step in the water unless you want to pull back a leg without a shoe." "When you get home clean your shoes and clothes with hot water and soap. If you don't the molds, yeast, and fungus in the mud will digest them in a couple of hours." Hey, what about skin? Bob's got my attention now.
Stop Three: we are all on a boardwalk over some nasty, stagnant water marsh. As we draw close to our leader he says "Don't lean back 'cause you're surrounded by Poison Sumac!" Well, we learned to identify and respect Poison Sumac--which was good, because it was everywhere. We still had not seen any Orchids. We come to what I think is Stop Four, and Bob tells us to string out along the edge of some really nasty-looking swamp. Skunk cabbage blanketing black masses of rotting everything, tangled drapes of vine-like growth, and a canopy the likes of a rain forest supported by lots of Poison Sumac. I am just wondering what he is going to point out to us now when he says "Let's go!" and heads straight into the swamp! I make it maybe 6 feet farther before I'm standing in black muck about a foot over my tennis shoes, trying to decide whether I'm going to grab desperately for a handhold in the Poison Sumac clump that I'm struggling through or fall directly on the 30-inch anthill that I was avoiding just before I hit the muck. After a couple hundred feet of crashing, sloshing, sweaty progress through stands of Poison Sumac and God-knows-what-else, I begin to wonder how we are supposed to look for rattlesnakes, let alone Orchids in this infestation.
We spot a few interesting things as we trek along (any excuse to stop and rest; I even tried following a lady in her seventies but the going was way too slow, so she left me behind). Everybody got excited over a Cinnamon Fern that was about 5 feet high. Where did these people come from? What's a Cinnamon Fern, and am I the only one who's tired, hot, bug-bitten, covered with black oozy, scary stuff, and lost? Through the haze of dizziness my eye was caught by a spot of color down under a large stand of Poison Sumac. I wondered what it was. I carelessly parted the venomous shrubbery that I had been embracing on and off all morning, half expecting to find a Mountain Dew soda can discarded by some earlier adventurer. Hmm, too small for a can . . .WOW ! There it was right in front of me! I became so excited I almost dropped my camera. A perfect little yellow Orchid.
I began to hear cries from around me of other discoveries. Where a minute ago we were crashing around just trying to stay upright, we were now stepping carefully around each growth to avoid crushing the precious blooms that we had come in search of. I made a special effort to catch up with Ranger Bob, learn his real name, and thank him profusely for showing us the Orchids but even more so for getting us all through this experience alive and mostly intact. This guy is good! A short time later, we were walking out of the woods in the pouring rain, muddy, bitten and smiling. The first wild Orchid I found was exactly like one I had read about the night before in one of her books. I even knew the name of it: "Cypripedium calceolus var. parviflorum." We were talking about the showy lady's-slippers we saw and of my mild disappointment that we had seen all of the native Cypripediums that I had read about except my favorite, the ram's head lady's-slipper (Cypripedium arietinum) with its distinctive, downwardly extended, purple-veined lip. What was I saying? This doesn't sound like me. But wait a minute. She had her arm around my muddy waist! She had a smile on her lips that made her face glow, and she was looking at me! Only then did I realize that all along she had been sharing something very precious with me. The mystical world of Orchids, an attraction that can't really be described, only experienced.
Well, I don't have a greenhouse yet. I don't even have a basement corner with lights. However, I now have a plant in bloom on my window sill, two terrestrials that are considering a bloom or two on my balcony (and a third that shows signs of becoming my first victim terminus orchidae'). All of these are gifts or loans from my first and forever favorite Orchidist. How will I ever thank her? It looks like I'll have plenty of time to try.
(Photographs by Nicholas Plummer)
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