The rain finally stopped this morning, and when I looked toward the tree, there was Pinecone. Perched on her familiar branch with a morning treat between her paws, she looked completely unconcerned about the fact that I had been wondering where she had been. I hadn’t seen her in a while, long enough that I had started hoping she was simply somewhere else being a squirrel.
There is a quiet kind of relief in seeing someone familiar return. Nothing dramatic happened. Pinecone did not announce herself or explain her absence. She simply appeared again, eating breakfast in the damp morning as though she had never been gone.
I think that is part of what happens when we begin paying attention to the lives around us. Their routines become familiar enough that eventually we notice the empty spaces too. We may never know where they go, what they encounter, or why they disappear for a few days, but somehow their return feels personal anyway.
So this morning, with the rain finally behind us and Pinecone back on her branch, there was really only one thing to say.
There you are.
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