It was the stuff of fairy tales.
A slipper of a lady hidden away in a forest.
A quest that took me over forty years to finally execute.
And a spell cast to make sure I would never repeat where precisely I had been.
My bucket list is kept as short as possible, and it always has been, intentionally so. I add to it as I find things within grasp of execution and likely possibility. Maybe that’s not the proper way to do a bucket list, but the idea of some long list of dreams I’ll never accomplish isn’t my idea of a good time. Instead, I keep the list small and doable, allowing myself to feel a sense of accomplishment I’d never have were I to list everything out all at once.
One thing that has been on that list for years, however, is to see a lady’s slipper orchid out in its natural habitat. I’ve kept in on the list because it’s not such a far-fetched dream. In fact, I had come close a few times. As recently as last year a friend at work had found one and alerted me to its presence, but due to weather and scheduling, I couldn’t get there on time. They live in the local woodlands, so it has remained on my radar, but vaguely so, never quite in complete focus.
A couple of weeks ago someone posted that they had just found a stand of lady’s slipper orchids in the Albany Pine Preserve, and after getting some loose directions I made my way there on a sunny lunch hour. It was warmer than I realized. My body had not yet adjusted to the heat of the season, nor was it accustomed to being out in the open beyond my front and back yards. Both were exhilarating, if a little uncomfortable at first. As I walked toward the path that led into the pine woodland, I took the first step of this little quest. I don’t always appreciate or make note of the start of such journeys – large or small – but on this day I did, because if I was successful in finding the orchids, this would be the demarcation of before and after.
A field of blue lupines was in full bloom on either side of the path, an auspicious start on this particular quest for beauty. I paused there, before I had even begun, because when prettiness presents itself – especially temporary prettiness, as in a field of flowers – one must stop and pay respect. Most of the lupines I see fly by the car at 70 miles per hour somewhere along the Massachusetts Turnpike. Seeing their intricate pea-like blooms up close was a treat – a bonus in what I hoped would be a day of breathtaking sights.
Back on the path, I waved off a few pesky little flies, and drank in more sun than I’d had in months. The lupines faded behind me, but a couple lined the first curve, beneath a small stand of trees, and I stopped there in the shade. As you get older, you stop more on walks, no matter how short. I wish I’d done that when I wasn’t as old. I don’t mean that to sound as sad and regretful as it might – I just wish I’d slowed down a bit. It’s something that could hold just as true today. Even on this pretty path, I found myself charging forward, on the lookout for something still ahead…
Having hiked maybe two or three times in my life (and by hike I mean walk into the woods for about twenty minutes, tops) I didn’t have much confidence in my sense of direction, and though it sounded easy enough to find them, I wound my way around various paths, doubling back to take a different turn when I couldn’t find the orchids. I was starting to give up and head back, when I remembered walking in the woods as a kid.
It was at this time of the year when we would begin studying for final exams – a time when we would have to go back into our binders to the first lessons of class and remind ourselves of everything we had learned during the whole school year. It was a daunting task that took several days, and invariably I would burn out at some point. When that happened, and when the sun still beckoned at 7 PM, I’d step away from the books and binders and steal into the backyard, nimbly navigating my way down the steep bank behind our house, stepping gingerly among ferns and mushrooms and crossing a street into a thicker forest, where I knew there were patches of jack-in-the-pulpit plants, and a rare maidenhair fern. There were daylilies on the edge of the woods, closer to the ditches that held more water, but they wouldn’t bloom for a few more weeks. Out in the woods the worries of schoolwork flitted away. My breath came easier, my heart-rate slowed. In the dappled sunlight, I found a place of peace.
In the pine preserve, I rediscovered that feeling. As soon as I relaxed, and my eyes adjusted to the subtleties of the forest floor, I let go of the nagging notion of direction and let the siren’s call of the lady slipper orchid alert me to her presence.
There, in a sea of pine needles and pine cones, slightly obscured by dead branches and new oak trees throwing out green leaves, I saw my first lady slipper. It was both smaller and larger than expected. I stepped carefully off the path and deeper into the wooded area, where suddenly a wave of them appeared around my feet, scattered here and there in haphazard fashion. An entire colony spread before me, as if they had just decided to appear by magic. I was entranced.
Very few things meet great expectations.
Very few bucket-list items end up being all that one hopes they will be.
This very first brush with the lady’s slipper orchid – this unexpected embrace by the sublime – met my expectations, thrilling beyond what I’d only ever imagined in my head.
Secluded from the rest of the world, a world at odds with itself and a world sick with so much, I felt an enormous release, even if I knew it was fleeting. I stopped there, inhaling the scent of the pines, the earthiness that emanated with help from the heat of the day, and took in the bewitching scene of these lovely ladies. They danced their dance in the middle of the afternoon, and allowed me to watch for a little while.
Reluctantly, I walked quietly out of their circle of beauty, returning to the path from which I had come, and it was like a veil suddenly descended behind me. I looked back and didn’t see them anymore, nor could I tell you where I might find them if I wanted to return. I was not unhappy to be under such a spell. There is an added element of beauty when some things are kept secret, when only you have been afforded a glimpse behind the veil.
Maybe it took this long to be accepting of their mystery, to not want to take them with me when I left, to marvel at their exquisitely enchanting blooms and hear their whispered charms and walk away with only a sense of greater calm, of greater appreciation for what beauty the world still holds.
