The Year of Orchids

So far, so weird. Fresh from flooding, the goodness of people, and the entropy of everyday evolution, I and many I know are reeling... "It would help if someone could explain to me what's going on," said a friend at my writers' evening (where no writing was done...) yesterday. 

Haven't we all heard, "There's nothing certain except uncertainty?" Yes, but when we're living in it, with it, and of it, it's not as glib as a cliche. 

It's real life.

Calypso bulbosa

These creatures inspire me. In the deep, thick moss on my hands and knees, I peer beneath the orchids' petals and laugh and cry and breathe. Nature is not just the landscape or the pretty scenery; nature is the raw force of life itself, manifesting, expressing, and guiding us.

When life gets weird, I go to mama earth. Unplugged, I connect to this planet: I am an earthling. Despite, because and within the change and confusion, we continue to grow, to be born, to die, to marry and separate, to laugh and to cry and to love. Triumphs and terrors: no one is exempt.

Orchis rotundifolia

"She's having sex with an orchid," said Silas when Andy wondered where I was  on  a hike the other day.

What can I say? In this season, on the shoulders of the summer solstice, I am alert, alive, and ready to show my true colours.

Cypripedium passerinum, the lady's slipper

And yesterday, shin deep in moss but without my camera, I spied pearl-coloured lady's slippers and the modest and retiring small northern bog orchid. To see the flower's details--anther, sepal, stigma, labellum--I had to fall on my knees, and really look.

Guess what?

Though orchids are considered rare and special, Orchidaceae is actually a diverse and widespread family. With the asters, one of the two largest families of flowering plants, orchids have twice the number of species than birds, and four times as many as mammals. 

Hmmmm. How do I wrap this up? What can I learn from the summer of floods and my discovery of the commonness of these exotic blooms? 

Platanthera dilatata, the bog orchid 

Perhaps the global weirding gives us an opportunity to trust, to believe that as expressions of nature, common and numerous as we seven billion humans are, that each of us have a purpose. Each one of us anchors our specific knowing, our unique and inimitable karma. It's time to shine, to go with the flow, and to believe that after this period of intense growth, we will have another respite, a time to rest and process what occurs in this growing season, weird as it may seem.