How to befriend a squirrel

I have to tell you first that I don’t really have advice on how to befriend a squirrel.

But it’s something that has been on my mind quite often lately, since I’ve been spending more time in our woodland. Sometimes when I go to my favourite forest here in the village, I see one. It’s a cheeky one, and it makes these little sounds from above, that’s how I spot it. I never really know what it means, if it wants to be noticed… or it’s telling me to go away. Either way, it’s such a lovely thing, and it made me wonder if there are squirrels in our woodland too. I haven’t seen any yet.

And I started thinking that maybe befriending a squirrel has very little to do with the squirrel.

It’s more about how you enter the forest. You sit and listen, observe each tree, each small movement, each sound. You learn the place. At first, you are a stranger, but with time, you know every branch and every hollow in the trees.

Sometimes I think we forget this completely. We move through the world so quickly, and we take space without really thinking about it. Everything feels rushed.

After years of exposure, presenting, and explaining, I find myself in a phase where I no longer want to announce myself. I just want to sit in the forest long enough for things to forget that I’m there. There is something very calming in this thought.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like befriending a squirrel is not really something you do, but more like… it just happens… if you’re patient enough,
and you don’t expect anything. You can’t chase a squirrel. If you do, it will run away. You have to become part of the forest until you are no longer an interruption. Maybe it’s not about what you do, but how you are.

I imagine it has something to do with being still. Not just literally, but in a deeper way, inside.

And I find this very beautiful, because it feels so different from how we are taught to move through life. I keep hearing that you have to be visible, to stand out. But in the forest, the way to be accepted is to not stand out.

Maybe this is what I am drawn to. How to be present without disturbing, and how to belong somewhere without needing confirmation. 

I don’t know if I will ever befriend a squirrel.

But I like the thought that somewhere, unseen, something small and careful continues its life in its own way.

And I dream to exist like that too.

Maybe that’s all these thoughts were … just noticing I want something different.

Something that feels more true to me.