This morning I came across this entry in a journal from 2021:

“Watching a squirrel in the hemlock, grooming her long tail.”

I felt a rush of gladness. A moment later, I asked myself: Why?

From this brief note in an old journal, a bouquet of reflections.

♥A tiny moment like this plants a flag in the ground: here’s what I think matters. Here’s what my life is about. Here’s what draws my attention and what I feel is worth ink and paper to hold it.

Some might object and say that such a moment is inconsequential; perhaps it is, for them. But for me, observing the world and its creatures has been a source of dependable delight and reassurance. Squirrels matter to me. The hemlock matters to me. And in a way, myself watching and admiring them both matters to me. I am reassured by my own love.

♥When you are anxious about the big issues – climate change, in my case, which has been breaking my heart on a regular basis – it is supremely comforting to return to the little and to scale down and back to a tiny moment: squirrel, tail, hemlock, appreciative observer.

From there, you remember: even if so much that I love is changing and imperiled, we live on this scale. Moment by moment, creatures together. It has always been thus and will ever be so. Calm your breathing. There is much to savor and notice right now.

♥Finally, I’ve written before about why we keep all those little notebooks, and I want to emphasize that here. We keep them to help ourselves notice. We keep them for the pleasure of noticing and the pleasure of shaping the noticing into words. We keep them to attest to ourselves that our experience of life – limited and subjective as it is – is important to US, even if to no one else.

Meeting the squirrel and the hemlock and myself in this old journal, I feel the dimensionality of my own life. Sometimes life seems like a bus someone else is driving, and it’s hurtling at top speed down a road to a destination we don’t wish to reach. But when I stumble upon a tiny moment like this in an old journal, I know that that’s not the case. Life is always an infinite generosity of moments – a moment playing music, a moment hugging a friend, a moment pulling a casserole from the oven, a moment observing a squirrel.

Through my notebook, I live that moment twice. And that squirrel, that hemlock. and that former self who observed them give me a gift of reassurance and courage.

Keep watching, Kate. And keep writing it down.

PS – Do you have either a writing practice that means a great deal to you, or a tiny moment recently that helped you in some way? If so, I’d be very grateful to hear from you about either or both. Please feel most welcome to leave a comment just below.

Thank you so much for reading, for being here, and for the tiny moments we spend together.