Delicacies of the Forest

Bananas and Chocolate... sounds like a delightful combination. And it was. Probably not the combination you are expecting though. As we wound our way through crooked paths arched with deep greens, we came across some most fascinating creatures. Meet Banana Slug.



He looks like he has just slimely slid from Lewis Carroll's, Alice in Wonderland. As he creeps along, he leaves behind an enchanting track of silvery rainbow ooze.

Enter the Chocolate Tube. I almost missed it. But as I was lying on my belly on the wet ground, examining a particularly large slug, I saw it. Poking out it's tuberous tendrils, feasting on the dead and rotting things.


Everything is alive here. Everything! You can't look at anything without finding another world hidden somewhere among the dead branches or the undersides of the clovers. The very forest floor is breathing. There is a pulse running through the ground... up the trunks... it circulates like the spores of the fungi... spreads itself like the delicate lichens... creeping, turning, dipping, curling... through everything, through everywhere, through everyone.

Drive to the woods

Beyond the backyard borders, a few hours past the naked highways, the forest thickens and roads begins to wind and unwind and wind again. The leaves are changing… splashes of sunburst yellow, burning oranges, the most vibrant of reds- the ones only nature is capable of bringing to fruition. The scent of trees and air and mountains and earth and rocks and water and glorious weeds envelop and swallow me whole.

After a while, the anticipation is tingling through me … I have to pull the car over… to climb through the wild flowers… run through the magic of it all. And it is the beginning and it is the end.

for this is an enchanted place