Everything about the Pacific North West, including my love for the place, is big. Perhaps that is why my love took hold. The simple magic of feeling small. The Gunnera, its emblem. Grandiose, prehistoric, botanical gluttony. This series is an ode to that big time love. Getting mesmerized, enchanted, perhaps even swallowed whole as I fall forever in love.
One of my earliest memories with flowers was finding a sole lady slipper filled with light in the woods in our backyard. I knew magic when I saw it even at age five and my response was to pluck it. I bounded into our kitchen with the bloom cupped in my hands as a gift for my mother. Her response was a gasp and a stern scolding. I learned the New England dogma regarding the endangered orchid. I had plundered our Maine woods. Maybe it was my own dose of karma, but I hadn’t seen one of these flowers since that morning at age five until this June. My dear childhood friend took me on a trail behind her house. Every step you took you saw another dozen. I am still learning not to pluck all the things that are magnificent in this world. But to take the time even if you’re being malled by mosquitos to plunder with the eyes.
