Curio

Every day Curio saw squirrels run up and down the ragged trunks of the forest. Where do they live? he wondered. On a fall day when the evergreens were anchoring themselves and their new-grown needles for the long winter ahead, he climbed into the heights of a fir tree, following the scrabblings of a small gray squirrel. There it was, a little hole in the cleft between two branches. For hours he watched the squirrel in its nest. When he finally looked away he lost his breath. Expanses of ancient forest spread below him in evergreen hillsides like motionless waves.