The Black Squirrel

Have you ever thrown your hands up to the universe & asked for help or wondered why certain life experiences happen the way they do? I had one of those experiences two months ago. One morning while I was polishing up a blog post that I had been working on for about a month, my phone glitched & the blog post disappeared into an internet black hole. My heart sank, I had been working on this post as a draft all this time & now it’s just gone? It made zero sense. All my other drafts were there, just the ONE I had been getting ready to publish. The one I had poured so much into, the one that held a piece of my soul… so to have it be just all of a sudden missing, was not only disheartening but confusing.

I spoke with my website company, what started as a small case file, turned into a full-blown search party into the dark web for my missing post. The team of people working to find this could only scratch their heads, it made zero sense even to them. I mourned for a couple of days, it brought back terrible memories of when my car was broken into 10 years ago & my bag was stolen… I didn’t care about my bag but I did care deeply about what was inside that bag, my journal. The thought of that keeps me up at night & now so did the lost blog post. My mind started wondering if all of what I was venturing into was not a good decision, that the universe was telling me otherwise. The signs were a bit too much in my face for me not to consider throwing in the towel. I could rewrite it yes, but the thought of doing so was beyond daunting & draining.

I walked into my office, looked out the window & said, “I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’m a fool for following this pipe dream.”

Tears streamed down my face as I stared out the window. The fiery fall leaves against the electric blue sky and the slight sway in the tree limbs put me into a trance where I could feel the silence. I then decided that I was going to ask the universe/God/unseen higher power, to show me something very specific, I asked the universe to send me a sign. A sign confirming that I must indeed go forward & endure. I asked the universe to send me a black squirrel… and to do so within a week. If a black squirrel showed up in my life within the week, I would take that as a sign to keep pursuing the path I was headed down. If not, I had some thinking to do.

So why a black squirrel? Have you ever seen a black squirrel? I have, but they are rare. 1 in 10,000 rare (which might not be THAT rare in the squirrel community but still rare). I didn’t ask for a common everyday object, I asked for something that I would not easily stumble across. Like a black squirrel. The universe was going to have to pull up its sleeves for this request.

I know what you are thinking, that this is ridiculous, but stick wIth me. If my blog post can just disappear into thin air then I should be able to ask for things to appear, right? Fair is fair. I believe there are forces guiding us through life and I wanted to test these forces. Test the power of intention & manifestation.

The following few days, my family & I headed up to our happy place, the woods of Maine. We hiked, mountain biked, took in the fall foliage & fresh mountain air… just what the doctor ordered. And what a perfect place to spot some wildlife, if I was going to see a black squirrel this was the place to put one in my path. The weekend came & went. No black squirrel. I felt a bit deflated like my dreams were coming to an end before I was able to show them to the world. But I also know the universe doesn’t work like that. If I am looking for something, the likely chance that I find it is not great. It’s like the quote “if you love something let it go, if it comes back you know it was meant to be.“ I put the black squirrel out of my head & went on with my week.

The next weekend my husband & I celebrated our anniversary. A weekend away at a place that for me feels like stepping into another home. The Mount Washington Hotel. The Mount Wash (what I like to call it), is magical. My history with both the hotel & the mountain itself runs back to high school when I moved to New Hampshire as a soon-to-be freshman in high school. The drive to get from Maine to New Hampshire was through Crawford notch which went right by the Mount Washington Hotel. The hotel will sneak up on you if you’re not paying attention as it is tucked back against the backdrop of the presidential mountain range with Mount Washington dominating overall. A grand white hotel with a bright red roof & large circular towers, the place looks like a castle. It’s breathtaking.

When I would step out of the front door to my house, the peak of Mount Washington was clear as day. I walked to school, so the memory of glancing over to my right before heading up the hill to the left, is a fond one. Some days the top of that mountain would be covered in snow in mid August, some days it was so clear, I felt like I could reach out & poke the top of it with my fingertip. On my 14th birthday, my mom & stepdad gave me the gift of a glider airplane ride that flew around Mount Washington. A glider is not an actual airplane but is towed by one. It is brought up to a certain height & then let go. Then you glide. The quiet is eerie & time seems to slow down. The feeling I had of being up in the air around this enormous mountain, a place where most people will never be able to view it from, is one I’ll never forget. It is a memory I will cherish forever. So as you can see my Mount Washington priming started early.

Fast forward to the spring of my sophomore year in high school. I was asked to the junior prom & where was prom going to be? The Mount Washington Hotel. From that point on, that hotel would be a place I frequented often. In my early 20’s I went to a ghost hunting event there (did I mention it’s super haunted) & there I would meet some of my dearest friends still to this day. That event has been one that would provide me with many memories over the course of the next 15 years. My paranormal skepticism runs high even with my curiosity & yet I have had experiences in that hotel that are undeniably unexplainable. Maybe that is a post in itself but for now, back to my husband & I’s a weekend away for our anniversary.

This would be the second year in a row that we spent at the hotel & as always, I could not wait to get there. We checked in, it was past dinner time so we got ourselves settled & headed to the only spot still serving food, one of the two hotel bars. We sat down and placed our order. Amid great conversation, I glance up behind my husband on the back wall & couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Tears started filling my eyes & a smile formed on my face. There, behind my husband was a framed print of two black squirrels. A print that looked like it was from an educational textbook. Below the squirrels, words solidified my thoughts. BLACK SQUIRREL

A guess maybe the universe was listening. It was just waiting for me to be in a place I would least expect it but also a place where it would make all the sense in the world. It makes it even more real. This is the type of stuff that happens in life where I scratch my head & wonder. But how could I not wonder? I asked for something & here it is. My sign has arrived, at the perfect time at the perfect place... 7 days after my request. But you’ve spent soo much time at the Mount Washington Hotel, Liz, how is it that you never noticed this? Because the hotel is a million square feet… not literally, but it would be close to impossible for me to recognize individual pictures within the hotel, they are everywhere. This was put in my path, directly. If I had been sitting in Bobby’s seat, I very well may have not seen it.

So what happened to the blog post that disappeared into the dark abyss? I checked every day, refreshing to see if it would magically appear. It didn’t… until it did. Two weeks after Mount Washington, I pulled up my blog as I did every day and there it was. As it was. I didn’t believe it would come back, but somehow, it did.

So, believe, believe in yourself but also believe that there may be something bigger than you, just waiting for you to ask for help.

What is your black squirrel?