Speaking with Nature: Awakening to the Deep Wisdom of the Earth - Sandra Ingerman, Llyn Roberts 2015

Banana Slug - Llyn
Banana Slug and Earthworm

Imagine strolling along a mossy trail in a dense, wet forest. Thousands of tiny migratory birds alight in the treetops overhead, chirping above the sounds of rain and raging glacial streams.

You breathe in the freshly scented air, rich in oxygen and negative ions. It is springtime in the rain forest. Everything is green and flowing and blooming. The rains will cease in a month, yet right now the earth is a sponge and water drips from every moss-bearded tree limb.

Seeming to walk with you on the lush and sopping trail, yet moving so slowly that you barely see it move at all, is a small, plump, snaillike creature with no shell. Of the countless nature beings I live with in the Hoh River Valley, the Banana Slug is a prolific and intriguing presence.

Why are Banana Slugs called Banana Slugs? The skin of a Banana Slug is colored yellow with brown spots, like the skin of a ripe banana. Although you may love to eat the mature, sweet, brown-speckled banana fruit, you would likely gag if offered Banana Slug snacks. But for many indigenous groups, slugs are a good source of protein, raw as well as cooked.

Tourists who visit the Hoh Rain Forest of the Olympic Mountains are mesmerized by Banana Slugs; their images adorn coffee mugs, posters, and tee shirts. For many who live in the Northwest, slugs are not so alluring, as they wreak havoc in people’s gardens, often consuming carefully planted seeds before the plants can sprout. If Slugs could speak, I imagine them to say: “Oh, how thoughtful of you to provide us with food!”

Even for those who do not maintain gardens, these small slimy life forms can elicit intense reactions from humans. Some find them ugly. I recently heard of a man who squashed every Banana Slug he encountered.

Many of us in commercialized cultures have a narrow range of what we consider to be beautiful. We also tend to project onto nature what we reject in ourselves.

Soft, fleshy, and fragile, the Banana Slug has no protective shell like its snail cousin. Does Slug mirror our underbelly? The divine feminine knows there is power in being vulnerable.

Sensitive as a lover’s heart, Banana Slug is likewise moist and spongy like female genitals and the fleshy insides of our mouths. Does this tiny being cause us to bristle because it hints at those parts of us that we deny or conceal?

The sensual, sensitive aspects of the sacred feminine are still something many of us hide as well as hide from, and they have been abused and misinterpreted across time and cultures.

All nature beings in the rain forest thrive on the rich, the dark, and the wet; these are not sun worshippers. In fact the Slug, which can remain under water for long periods, needs moisture to survive. Temperatures can drop into the twenties during Hoh winters, and snow and hail fall. In contrast to this, the hot, dry months of August and September would desiccate any wormy, wet life-form not under cover. During these times the Banana Slug crawls under a protective log, cocoons itself in slime, and trances out in ooze till warmth and/ or wetness resume.

Slugs love to nuzzle into the moist, mushy, lightless places of the forest, adjectives that also describe the environment in which babies are conceived, grow, and emerge into the world at birth. Sensuality is prime to nature and to life.

The endlessly patient Slug helps us reframe distortions that arise when sex is marketed and virtual, the earthy sacred feminine forgotten. The exquisite nature being Banana Slug does this by calling us back to what is rich and real—our bodies and the earth.

How do we honor Banana Slug medicine and touch back into tactile earthiness?

One way is to learn from wholesome young children who love to lie on the grass gazing up at clouds and stars, run through summer downpours, squish mud between their toes, roll down grassy hills, and smear face paints, cake frosting, or dirt onto their skin. My toddlers also loved to run their fingers through my hair, as well as through gooey cookie dough, and rub wet, salty-gritty sand all over their legs at the beach.

The simple, sensual explorations that occupy healthy youngsters signal robust curiosity and a hearty connection with their bodies and the earth. These kids are in touch.

In North America we say to one another, “I’ll be in touch,” “Please touch in,” “That’s a nice touch,” “I feel out of touch,” “I want to touch on this,” and so forth.

In developing countries I observe that people don’t talk as much as we do about touch. They touch.

College friends in India hold hands—boys with boys and girls with girls. Children and women in the Andes not only hug visitors, but they also hold each other’s hands and stroke their arms and hair. One woman on an Ecuador trip in the Andes many years ago proclaimed that although the shamanic rituals were powerful, the most healing aspect of her journey was the unconditional love she felt in being petted by the Quechua women and children. Innocent touch changed this woman’s life.

There are times in my healing practice when I have known that gently holding a person for a longer-than-normal hug in a noninvasive way would heal and allow grace to flow. I didn’t pray, chant, caretake, pity, strategize, or send energy, but simply felt goodness grow with every breath. The effects can be profound.

Spirit and body are inseparable. We are also one with our planet’s body. Touch is innate to who we are and how we know self and world.

Banana Slug suggests we get back in touch, with each other and with the earth.

The Slug body is primarily water, as are we and as is our planet. Banana Slug breathes through wet, porous skin and moves oh-so slowly on its foot muscle, gliding most easily in the rain on a thick protective trail of slime. Old timers in this region say slug slime is antiseptic; some even borrow slime from Slugs to apply to scrapes on their own skin.

Banana Slugs may stubbornly not budge while you watch them. Turn away and they seem to glide huge distances in no time. Once when I lay down for a nap by the river about an hour’s walk from my cabin, I made sure no Slugs were near; I did not want to squash one or get slimed in my sleep. Twenty minutes later I opened my eyes to see a Banana Slug dozing next to me on my wool blanket.

Life would take a different spin if we also hugged the land as do trusting and tender Slugs.

The unguarded Banana Slug freely shares her deep feminine teachings: “Remember the sensual and the power of little.”

Nourishing our children and friends, preparing a delicious meal, and much of the goodness of life involves simple details and interactions that make all the difference. It’s the little things that matter most.

My children, Sayre and Eben, are now twenty-six and twenty-three. When they were young it took me insane amounts of time to get things done, yet young childhood is precious and short. I strove to put distractions aside and invest in little joys, such as reading stories and making up games, picking berries and visiting Lady Slippers in Sayre and Eben’s secret forest places, or serving picnics under the dining room table on snow days. With children little things rank big. And they keep parents grounded.

With my children grown and living on their own, since living in the Hoh Rain Forest, I again focus my restlessness in order to honor the little. One has to be like a Slug—slug-(g)ish—in order to see, let alone appreciate, these tiny camouflaged beings that play an incredible role in forest ecosystems.

Banana Slugs are vital to the decomposition of plants and spread seeds and spores across the forest floor. They are also amazingly sentient. Come to Slug with malice and it retracts and plays dead or asleep. Speak in a soothing tone and this fellow being may lift its head and turn to look at you. Chatting with Banana Slugs can make me weep.

I traveled out for a workshop while writing this chapter and happily wrote on Banana Slug on my flight back to Seattle. Upon return I stayed for a night in my friend Ryanne’s minimalist house on Whidbey Island, a 120-square-foot space with a sleeping loft. I climbed the loft ladder and went to bed musing about Banana Slugs. I woke up at 2:00 a.m. musing about Banana Slugs. I got out of bed the next morning musing about Banana Slugs. This is the way of things when I write.

In the morning I climbed down from the loft and stepped barefoot through dewy grasses to my young friend’s little kitchen building, eighty paces from the sleeping house. The cooking room, reminiscent of a New England summer kitchen, had windows on three sides looking out to tall trees and an inlet. A tiny bathroom was built onto the backside of the kitchen.

Musing with Banana Slug and staying in this elfin dwelling brought a happy simplicity to my return. I made some hot tea and sat on the little kitchen veranda enjoying the morning smells and sounds.

Later I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the tiniest sink I have ever seen, in a teensy-weensy bathroom, which fulfilled every toiletry need including a shower.

Banana Slug’s teaching of the power of small is big in current times when hoarding is at the same time diagnosable and prime-time entertainment. Our households and storage units are packed, yet our lands are stripped and our hearts are vacant.

The power of the small was very apparent in a water ritual I shared with shamans on the Mongolian border, which included a silent sunrise ceremony. It felt powerful not to impose—to be silent and move softly, allowing space for dawn’s delicate expression. No words were spoken as a creation fashioned from nature was passed from person to person. Then as the sun rose, it was presented to the lake. We watched the gentle ripples as one person placed our gift in the water, knowing our love would touch every shore.

Despite our conditioning to be big, loud, in your face, more, complicated, bigger, and louder again, the sacred feminine is alive and well in the simple, the silent, and the small. Even in the invisible.

Banana Slug posits: “The feminine spirit awakens; honor your heart to feel her caress.”

When I stepped out from Ryanne’s bathroom on that cool island morning, I felt a tug and glanced to my right. There in a wee love nest of glistening grass blades was the first Slug couple I’ve seen in my four years of living in the Northwest—a visual feast of two Slug arcs almost creating a heart shape together, with translucent white forms conjoining in the heart’s center.

It was auspicious to find these little lovers at this humble home. The lightly treading dweller of this place is thirty-two years old. The world was different twenty-five years ago when I was Ryanne’s age. Instead of ignoring the state of things or indulging apocalyptic gloom, she contributes by example, understanding the largeness of small. There are many like her who do not wait or plan for or boast about a new societal dream; they live it. The benefit ripples out like water blessings in a lake.

A barred owl flew over our heads the night I arrived at Ryanne’s home, and now pure Slug ecstasy played out in front of me. All was well here between people and nature.

For those of us who still worry and wait, or endlessly scheme a new dream, what locks us in old paradigms and keeps us from being living examples of ecstasy and harmony?

“Oh, this one little thing will free you,” Banana Slug says, sliding up to join the conversation: “Know that you are enough, just as you are.”

Though humble and little Banana Slug’s slow fertilization will help to bring back an old-growth forest. This requires the patience of a Banana Slug, as it is a thousand-year investment. It also depends on whether we humans can revere the small and let nature restore.

Patience comes naturally to Banana Slug, which is what it is, and does what it does, unfettered by even the baggage of protection.

We, also, can stay uncomplicated—root in who we are as we do amazing things for our planet.

The little creature Banana Slug does not even need a partner to procreate, though it may choose one. Efficiently, the sex organ is eaten after coitus. Banana Slug is definitely a world unto itself.

It may not always seem so, yet we also carry within us everything we seek. We do not have to strategize our way back to wholeness, as grace is here for us to touch right now.

Banana Slug holds up a hopeful mirror: “You and I are not so different, and who we are is enough.”

Practices

Through the stories and suggestions above, we engage Banana Slug wisdom, get back in touch, and empower the small.

Think about tiny aspects that largely have a positive impact on your life right now. Envision and appreciate these. Give energy to the little.

Banana Slug helps us recover childlike curiosity and sensuality. This can be as simple as dipping our fingers into a cold stream or under faucet water, sifting our hands through beach sand or in a child’s sandbox, stroking a baby’s silken cheek or the soft fur of a pet, or sniffing our favorite cooking spices or an indoor flowering plant. Open your heart and senses and see how alive the small makes you feel.

As important as it is to be in touch, all of us know how it feels to be panicked, stressed, or overwhelmed—to lose touch, feel out of touch, and forget the power of the little.

Consider a gentle approach at such times; for example, lying on a carpeted floor or a natural covering outside; taking some luxurious deep breaths and moving with the breath in slow, minuscule ways as if cozying up to the earth; and hugging the land like a tender Slug magnet.

Take all the time you like gently touching and stretching. Allow your body to show you how it wants to move; engage the sensual.

Breathe with whatever feelings arise, allowing them to bubble up and wash through as you move.

Our bodies instinctively know how to unwind, free unexpressed feelings, and absorb good energy from the earth. This is how we find our way back to ourselves, our breath, and what we really feel.

The small will return you to yourself. The power of the little is key to healing naturally. In ayurveda, for instance, practitioners suggest small life shifts to support greater well-being. As another example, in homeopathy tiny amounts of remedy can trigger big healing responses.

In moving like a sensual Slug, little by little you will start to again feel happy to be in a body here on Earth.

Ah, what a good feeling!

This may be just the right time to review the life patterns that put you out of touch.

After reading about Banana Slug, muse and journal about other ways you’re inspired to empower the small and reclaim the sensual.

What is right for you and what presents itself auspiciously?

Little by little—and a little at a time—is the way.

People will notice and wonder. They may say, “Wow, you glow! What are you doing?”

Applying the little is often invisible, yet the effects can show in a big way.

Slugs are vulnerable. They sometimes get squashed. Sometimes humans do, too, when life truly falls apart. For example, they may lose their homes or families to floods and fires or their loved ones to the military or to posttraumatic-stress suicide.

Remember little Banana Slug, which is what it is, and does what it does, nourishing and seeding the earth despite the surrounding devastation of cut forests.

During times of crisis we also can be who we are and ground ourselves in the small. Search out the little things. Focus on the small and tangible. Act and gesture in ways that touch the heart and also get done what needs to be done. Banana Slug medicine helps us stay humble and focused in order to recover our touch and purpose during unstable times.

The world is at a tipping point instigating great reality shifts. Neither we, nor Banana Slugs, can escape being vulnerable. Yet as uninviting as being unguarded feels, it teaches us to be open and fluid as change washes through.

Throughout all, meek and wise Banana Slug encourages: “Stay simple and in touch. You and I, we are just enough.”