john laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered and sharply handsome despite the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.
two years ago i went to florida to meet laroche after reading a small article about a white man and three seminole men arrested with rare orchids they'd stolen out of a place called the.
orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.
the victorian-era orchid hunter william arnold drowned on a collecting expedition.
schroeder fell to his death.
endres was shot dead in rio hacha.
augustus margary survived toothache, rheumatism, pleurisy, and dysentery.
nothing in florida seems hard or permanent. the developed places are just little clearings in the jungle, but the jungle is unstoppably fertile, everything is always growing or expanding. at the same time, the wilderness disappears before your eyes.
florida is a landscape of transition and mutation, a hybrid of unruliness and orderliness, nature and artifice.
mr. laroche?
my name's susan orlean, i'm a writer for the new yorker. it's a maga --
right. so i was interested in doing a piece about your situation down here.
a few days after the hearing, laroche took me to an orchid show in miami.
why the ghost orchid?
men from florida dominated the orchid hunting scene. hunters in the fakahatchee hauled out thousands of orchids in horse-drawn flatbed carts.
wow, that's some story. so how many turtles did you end up collecting?
oh.
okay, now what is lap --
so, did you ever miss the turtles? the only thing that made you ten year old life worth living?
but why?
there are more than thirty thousand known orchid species. one species looks like a german shepherd.
 one looks like an onion, one looks like an octopus. one looks.
i don't think so. i'm not prone to --
i know who darwin is.
i know what proboscis means.
i get it.
i wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants but it isn't part of my constitution.
i should work. i've got stuff.
laroche is an optimist. that is, he sees a profitable outcome in every situation. when he was a young man he worked in construction.
laroche once spilled toxic pesticide into a cut on his hand. it resulted in permanent heart and liver damage. most people would consider this a terrible accident. laroche considered it a success.
 because he sold an article about it.
the pioneer-adventurers in florida had to travel inward, into a place as dark and dense as steel wool. they had to confront what a dark, dense, overabundant place might have hidden in it.
hello, john? it's susan.
so i was thinking it'd be good for the article for me to go into the fakahatchee to see a ghost. would you take me?
you would have to want something very badly.
 to go looking for it in the fakahatchee strand.
an early surveyor made this entry in his field notes.
whatever isn't wet in the fakahatchee is blasted. the grass gets so dry that the friction from a car can set it on fire, and the burning grass can engulf the car in flames. a 1940's botanist noted:
the swamp's darkness and denseness can rattle your nerves. a sailor on a pluma- collecting expedition wrote in his diary:
the swampy part of the fakahatchee is hot and wet and buggy and full of cottonmouth snakes and diamond back rattlers and.
 alligators and snapping turtles and poisonous plants and wild hogs and.
it had been a hard day and i hadn't seen what i'd come to see. maybe the ghost orchid was a ghost after all.
that night i called laroche.
i didn't see anything but bare roots.
what i didn't say to him is that life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid -- wonderful to imagine and easy to fall in love with but a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.
thank you. thanks very much.
oh, thank you.
yeah, john's a character all right.
well, thanks. thank you.
oh, um, random house wants me to expand it into a book. so i'll be doing that.
yeah. more john, more orchids.
you want to make this into a movie?
i've got to write it first. someone's gotta write the screenplay. most things never get made. it's premature to --
john, it's susan. orlean. so, i was just wondering if you might be willing to talk some more.
c'mon, john, i'm trying to put together a book. don't just abandon me down here.
i suppose what i'd been doing in florida was trying to understand how people found order and contentment and a sense of purpose in the universe by fixing their sighs on one single desire. now i was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without a trace.
hello, john, it's susan.
so, how's everything going?
that sounds good.
so i've been meeting a lot of orchid people, going to shows, i thought you might want to hear about it.
if you really loved something, wouldn't a little of it always linger?
not like a marriage.
isn't it ironic? you adapting my book? my three years in florida meditating on my inability to experience passion resulted in my finding it with you.
on december 21, 1993 john laroche and three seminoles illegally removed one hundred and thirty rare plants from the fakahatchee strand state preserve.
yeah.
right. now laroche is part of florida history. as a mannequin.
who is that?
the greatest poverty is not to live. in a physical world, to feel that one's desire. is too difficult to tell from despair.
john, it's susan.
i went to the orchid society show a couple of days ago.
there was a display of you stealing the ghost orchids. you're famous.
so, look, john, i still haven't seen a ghost. and i was wondering --
really? thank you so much! i just.
where are our supplies?
he made it sound like a bible story, the hopeful journey through darkness into light. i never thought many people in the world were like john, but i was realizing more and more that laroche was an extreme, not an aberration -- most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life.
cute.
uh-huh.
thanks. could i get some lemon please?
laroche, can i ask you a personal question?
not really.
the sundial isn't working.
so, john.
we turned to the right and saw only more cypress and palm and sawgrass
so you'll pick me up? yeah, tomorrow.
don't stop, johnny.
johnny! where are you going?
honey, come back to bed.
who's the bloody fat guy?
really? i wanted to meet -- oh. what does he know?
johnny, i'm so tired now.
johnny, come lie on top of me.
um, oh.  this screenwriter was killed doing research in jamaica a few years ago. screenwriter, you have a car?
we drive his car there, leave it on the side of the swamp. that works.
sorry.
huh.
hey, here's one of my lines. "isn't it ironic? you adapting my book? my three years in florida meditating on my inability to experience passion resulted in my finding it with you."
well, it's kind of pathetic, dontcha think?
here's me! here's me again! "i wanted to know what it's like to care about something passionately."
yeah, i know, charlie-boy. chill. i'm laughing at who i used to be. it's sad.
you can't learn about passion. you can be passion. and it wasn't john who made me passion. it was orchids.
i lied about what happened at the end of the book. on the way out of the swamp.
i still don't get it. i mean, there it is. i can see it's pretty, but --
back in john's basement he explained his real plans for the ghost. he'd discovered a chemical inside with psychoactive properties. his plan had always been to clone the flower and make a fortune marketing this drug. it was laroche's kind of plan, it wasn't a controlled substance because the government didn't know it existed.
the first time i tried it, the split second it took effect, i understood orchids. i loved them with a passion i'd never felt for anything. for anyone.
isn't it curious? an orchid made me passionate about orchids.
with this powder i am passionate about everything.
holy jesus. holy.  hey, baby, hey.
yeah, let's, baby.
ohhh.
that's beautiful! what's that, johnny? what's that one called? i just so want to fuck that flower, don't you?
um, y'know.  charlie or something.
identical twigs? did i say twigs? i meant twins.
water sounds so sparkly. like lemon plastic jewels plopping onto a silver trampoline! dontcha think?
can we fuck now, baby? fuck like lemons?
hey, it's the screenwriter!
i love your gun, baby. can we trade?
where'd johnny go?
oh, johnny.
oh, johnny. johnny's teeth. oh.
you're really so wonderful.
so wonderful. i can see inside your soul. it glows with orange sadness. it's raining inside you. i want to run through your dripply dripples. it's so beautiful. i love you. i do.
no, it's me. it's the real me. look at you. i just want to hold you and -- oh, crap, it's wearing off. crap!
i can't let you go, fatty. i can't let you make this public.