What scars do we wear on our skin, bearing evidence of the suffering we have endured? How are the marks of our lives visible on the surface? Is it the look in our eyes? The way we walk, head to the ground, shoulders hunched? Is it the way we flinch when someone comes near us? Is it our reactions to circumstance, a bubbled up shard of conditioning that causes us to behave in a particular way?

In many mythologies, animals bear physical evidence of their stories on their bodies.

How did the camel get his hump? We've got a story for that.

How did the elephant get his trunk? We've got a story for that?

How did Australian birds get their rambunctious, cacophonic, awful screeching? My husband's got a story for that. But that's for another time.

Upon sighting this little guy, I got to reading a little about echidnas, and found the Aboriginal myth about them to really haunt me. It struck me that people can do the most terrible things, but forgiveness and compassion is the kinder option. Although when you hear about what the echidna did, maybe you'll change your mind about that.

Echidna was a an old man who lived apart from his people and rarely leaving his bark hut. He was too old to hunt and used to survive by killing young men who he'd lure to his hut. If that's not a warning about the dangers of isolating and abandoning your elders, I don't know what is. How awful that he was left alone to fend for himself, with no other recourse but to murder to survive! Of course I feel compassion for him. I understand why he did what he did. Yet then I think, seriously? He ate young men? That's either really kinky or really twisted or both. Probably both. Thus, I can also understand what this punishment was, although I can't really condone it either. Thank goodness it's a story.

When they found out, they sought him out, threw spears at him and broke his arms and legs, leaving him twisted and crippled.

Horrifically injured, he crawled into a log and waited for his wounds to heal. Yet all was not lost - emerging from the cave, his hands and feet were transformed, becoming strong and useful digging tools. Yet the spears remained - the quills that cover the echidna's body. How many of us are marked by our tribulations? Whether it's physical or psychological, they can certainly mark us, but we can also use them to our benefit. We may break the rules, do wrong - but we can emerge with some kind of goodness, some kind of useful thing that will carry us through.

Yet the next part of the myth is even sadder - when he sees you today, he'll burrow down to get out of your way. He's terrified, because he remembers the punishment for what he'd done. What shame he must live with, and what terror! I've known people to flinch at physical contact due to some terrible abuse in their childhood, and feel such compassion for those who cannot bear the ecstasy of physical pleasure because of it. I can't help feeling sorry for Old Man Echidna.

But how he snuffles so, so close to the dark and rich earth! How he can be oblivous to us, great big fields of human energy staring down at his burrowing, his sharp claws uber efficient at digging!

The path he's come is a waste of snuffed ant's nests
and deeper holes by crumbling logs;
this patch of scrub is all echidna dreaming -
the amber fuzz of banksia, the fallen she-oak cones,
the dried out grass trees hunkered down
Jan Owen: Echidna




There's another story about the Echidna that involves the explanation of how he got his quills - same same, spears in the back, but that's because Turtle ate his baby . Talk about bad behaviour. Not good form, Turtle. Perhaps just stick to insects and fish next time? Of course, when Echidna found out, they had a massive argument about it. Echidna went nuts, throwing stones at the turtles back. Turtle retaliated by throwing grass spears at him. No accepting of responsibility there!

In the end, the solution was for them to live in different places (good solution, guys!) but the spears remained, and the turtles skin hardened to form it's shell.

What scars do you bear? What hardens on you? Or perhaps this is an important and proud part of your identity, something that says: I have suffered. I am. I am. I am.

Or maybe, like the Echidna, we just want to be left alone.

Echidna - Les Murray

Crumpled in a coign I was milk-tufted with my suckling
till he prickled.
He entered the earth pouch then
and learned ant-ribbon,
the gloss we put like lightning on the brimming ones.
Life is fat is sleep. I feast life on and sleep it,
deep loveself in calm.
I awaken to spikes of food-sheathing, of mulling fertile egg,
of sun, of formic gravels,
of worms, dab hunting, of fanning under quill-ruff when budged:
all are rinds, to sleep.
Corner-footed tongue-scabbard, I am trundling doze
and wherever I put it
is exactly right. Sleep goes there