A Squirrel's Question

Lewis sped eagerly across the forest floor, his ears deaf to all other sounds except for the quickly rustling pine needles and newly fallen leaves under his feet.  His bushy, course haired tail swished back and forth energetically behind him, keeping in time with his labored breath. I wonder how long I've been running, he briefly thought to himself as the tired ache began to settle into his haunches.  However, he quickly brushed the thought away and kept on. He was on his way to see the Great Eagle.

Lewis had always been a curious little thing as he grew.  His brothers and sisters bustled around with the rest of the Squirrels, collecting and storing nuts faster than he could.  But where he lacked in normal squirrely talents, Lewis made up for in inquisitiveness. His elders often grew impatient with his constant chatter.

"But-but WHY must we HIDE the nuts?"

"But-but WHERE do the nuts come from?"

Such questions came with an obligatory shrug and half answer muffled by cheeks already filled with these mysterious nuts.  But one day, Lewis asked a question that stopped all the squirrels, even ever so briefly, in their tiny tracks.

"Why are we here?"

They were shocked.  A Squirrel had never asked such a question.

"Lewis, what do you mean? We are here to collect nuts for the winter, of course!"

"But why?"

He never stopped asking.  He was intent on finding the answer to this question that no one understood.

One day, a neighboring Rabbit from a fluffle over hopped over to him.  The news of this question had spread quite far apparently. The Rabbit's black nose glistened with wet and quivered with caution.

"Go see the Great Eagle," he squeaked quietly, almost like a whimper.  "She lives in the Oak to the east of the Lake. She knows ALL."

And before Lewis could spit out his nuts to inquire further, the Rabbit had already launched backwards into the tall grass and disappeared.

He was close now. He could feel the faint cool of water in the air that flew past his face and he could already make out the lazy hum of the gypsy mosquitos that had planted their camp at the lake that summer.  The sun no longer beat down through the canopy of the forest ceiling, but now slipped to his right, shooting golden pink hues into his path. There! The lake glinted with the golden pink and he darted left. The Oak towered above her sisters, her leaves rustling slightly with the early evening breeze, as if in disdain at the smaller ones that swayed back and forth beneath her.

Lewis panted at the bottom of the Oak, his wide black eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Eagle...?" His voice sounded much smaller than he remembered it. Suddenly, he remembered a story from before he was grown where an Eagle ate a Squirrel.  He gulped.

Silence.

And then…

"Yes?"  A head emerged slowly from the pale orange leaves, white as the first snow, smooth as perfectly polished acorn, and was followed by broad, angry shoulders feathered with dark.  Her voice dripped with age and something that scared him.

"I have a question, Great Eagle," Lewis cleared his throat and stood up on on his back legs, thrusting his chest out as far as it could go.

The Eagle rumbled. "Well, go on then."

"I-I want-want-to know, well.. it’s just that... why are we here, Great Eagle?  Why am I here?"

The Eagle's head spun around and she peered down her crooked beak at Lewis.  Her beak almost shimmered in the golden pink sun and suddenly looked very sharp.  Her eyes were sharper. They narrowed.

"Before I give you the answer you are looking for, Tiny Thing, you must first go back to the beginning.  Now. And then come back."

Lewis's heart sunk.

"Back? Now?" It had been such a long journey and he had run the whole day.  His back legs quivered with exhaustion and it was getting darker.

"Now." And the Eagle disappeared back into the Oak.

The golden pink of the sun had now faded to a grey feeling blue and the mosquitos were humming louder. Lewis whimpered and began dragging back through the forest.  The longer he walked, the angrier he grew. Why couldn't the Eagle just GIVE him the answer?  Why make him go on this ridiculous journey AGAIN? And in the DARK?

The distant cry of a coyote whistled through the tops of the bushes to reach Lewis's ears and he instantly tensed with fear.  The fur on his back to his tail stood up and his

nose and lip quivered.  He quickly scampered up a tree and flew from branch to branch as fast as his tired paws could drag him, the cries of the coyote chasing him on.

When he woke, he was near his home.  He could hear the Squirrels already awake and scampering about, preparing for the first nut hunt of the day.  It was early morning. He stretched lazily and winced as his legs and paws remembered his journey from the day before.  He rolled back into a ball beneath his tail in the crook of the tree branch and closed his eyes.

And then he remembered what the Great Eagle said.

"... you must first go back to the beginning.  Now. And then come back."

Lewis groaned with annoyance and frustration and wanting to sleep but the unanswered question still tugged at his mind.  He flug himself out of the tree and gathered a few nuts out of the Hiding Place for his journey.

It was still early out and the dew clung to his paws as he sleepily started on his way.  He took the journey slowly this time, and much to his surprise, it wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was kind of pleasant.  Had he just not noticed it before? The slowly turning yellow and orange of the leaves swayed easily in the morning breeze and The Red Breasted Twins were bickering again, though their playful fights were a pretty little song.  With nothing else to do, he hummed along to their spirited tune, the life returning to his tired limbs.

On his way, he passed a scurry of Squirrels from a couple neighborhoods over.  They hastened about in an orderly chaos in and up and around their trees, hunting.  He stopped to watch the dance for a minute, and that’s when he saw her. Fur like hazel silk and eyes more big and beautiful than he’d ever seen.  She paused when she felt him watching her and her round, full cheeks twitched into what looked like a tiny smile. And then she was gone.

Lewis kept going.  He was almost there.  The forest began to smell like the lake in the morning, comforting and sweet.  I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that the lake smells like this before, he thought to himself.  But ah, there’s the Oak! He quickened his pace, bouncing through the grass that was now warm to the touch in the sunlight.

The Eagle heard him coming.  She was perched on a low branch of the Oak and ruffled her long, deeply dark feathers, waving him closer.

“I did what you said, Eagle!”  He boasted proudly, raising himself on his back legs.  “Now will you tell me the answer?”

She peered down at him closely.

“There is no answer, Tiny Thing.”

His heart dropped down to his toes.  And then the fur on his back and to the tip of his tail stood up.

“What do you mean there’s no answer?! I ran all day and all night back and forth like you told me! You’re supposed to know all!”  Tears began to well up in his big black eyes and that terrible stone started to rise in his throat, making it hard to swallow.

She sighed.  A deep, rolling sigh that echoed through the trees.

“Tiny Thing, tell me.  What did you see on your first journey to see me?”

Lewis swallowed and wiped his eyes on his tail.

“Uhm, I-uhm… not much, I guess.  The lake? The sun was going down.  I don’t know, I was looking for you!”

“And tell me, what did you see on your second journey?”

Lewis remembered the yellow and the orange on the trees.  The song the Red Breasted Twins were fighting with each other to sing.  The beautiful little Squirrel with the silky hazel fur and smiling cheeks.  How the lake smelled of sweet and cool.

“My dear Squirrel, none of us can truly know all.  Not all questions have answers, you see. Perhaps it is not for us to know the ‘why’ of why we’re here, Tiny One.  The thing to know, is that sometimes in our eagerness to know the ‘why’, we often miss the ‘here’ that we are in entirely.”

Before Lewis could respond, the Eagle had spread her wings, so wide that the sun was dark to him for a moment.  And suddenly he was blown backward by the heavy gust of wind that her wings beat into the grass around him. He looked up to watch her soaring into the tops of the mountains, her crown as white as the snow that capped them.  As he lay there in the warm grass, watching her disappear, he realized, he had never looked that far up before. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.