squirrel

This card is dedicated to my grandfather, Emil Rolling, who passed long before our relationship fully developed, but who left so many forgotten seeds, like the sketch of a squirrel, for me to find along the way.

While jumping from limb to limb, squirrels scurry across maps of their own buried seeds - some intentional, some long forgotten. With hundreds of seeds to manage, it’s inevitable to leave some behind. Squirrels never fret -- a forgotten seed may be the best accident that could happen.

Maybe it’s no accident at all.

Squirrels are simultaneously storing seeds for the winter and planting foundations for the generations of grandchildren to come. These forgotten seeds become the pines, oaks, and cypress that host the homes, playgrounds, and dinners of every squirrel. And in them, squirrels play. They rejoice in the irony and synchronicity of their whole existence — their trees a foundation that celebrates the sacred reciprocity of Earth.

How wholesome to remember that the stable foundations we play in now were once the seeds our ancestors forgot about?

No wonder squirrels play on their hunt for seeds. Eaten or forgotten, they know the Earth has a plan: a seed will always be found and it will endlessly provide.

Wouldn’t you play more on the journey if you knew?

THE PRAYER

I trust the timing and purpose of every seed I’ve planted.

REMEMBER YOUR CONNECTION

꩜ If you knew every project you left behind would be picked up again by someone else, how would you leave it?

꩜ Go squirrel watching.

꩜ What seeds are providing for you right now?

The original sketch my Pappi drew as a child.