How strangely human-like is the fantastical, lantern-jawed face of the little western calypso orchid! (Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, also called the western fairy slipper orchid and the hider-of-the-north.) But is its broadly parted expression a grin or a grimace? Although it takes the familiar form of a smile, something about it is unsettling. Its dark, unfaltering eyes level on us a knowing look, as if the demure bloom sees something we do not. Could it be sinister or malevolent instead? Perhaps what its human-like visage enables us to ken is not malice but merely the wary indifference with which all wild creatures view us. They simply do not need us, other than to be left alone to carry on their existence unimpeded by the rapacious overreach of ours. Over millennia, they have learned to avoid us as angry, unjust overlords. We humans are all consuming. Every living thing, every substance, every space on earth, or under the earth, or over the earth, is subject to our dominion. As our planet’s apex species, we simply cannot comprehend the notion of not needing literally everything in our environment to maintain our comfortable, even if tentative position. We distrust anything that does not reciprocate that same insatiation — anything that does not need us — and thus consign it to some ominous otherworld to feel more at home in ours. The very wilderness from which we sprang is relegated to a mere resource to be subjugated and tamed in an ever downward spiral of alienation and exploitation. The wild things know this.
Perhaps, just perhaps, when we peer deeply enough into the faces of our fellow beings, we catch a frightening glimpse of what they truly see gazing back at us: ourselves.
© 2026 Anthony G. Colburn