letting go of squirrels; people too.

We found a ground squirrel in Yosemite last week, on the stone steps up to Vernal Falls. His legs weren't doing what legs are supposed to do and Nick picked him up, snuggled him into my sweater. His little body relaxed, his back legs spread out like how my dog does when he is trying to cool off on the kitchen floor. I know nature will be nature, but we hoped to give him a fighting chance. Especially because when I put him back on the ground to see if he'd scurry away, he laid very tired and drunk in pain over the top of my shoe. I ran my finger softly over his spine and he breathed slow with no fear.

The staff at the nature center told us they don't care for injured wildlife, and I understood. We walked down a path, stepped over a barrier, and Nick laid the squirrel under a big tree where no one could see him. Just a tiny ball of fuzz under towering cathedrals of granite. Nick poured a little water into a piece of bark, and every drop of water I had in my body started coming out my eyes as we walked away. "I can't believe we're leaving him here," I said.

And I think he died, slipped away quietly. There are a lot of ground squirrels in Yosemite, though. There are a lot of people in the world, too. Sometimes, you're the one being left under the tree. Other times, you walk away hurting and guilty. Either way, we're all just the wildlife of this world and nature will be nature.