I've been trying to write about yearning for three days, but the words won't come. They keep getting tangled up in thoughts of the abandoned cat colony I've been feeding - an irony that isn't lost on me.

Just as I start to articulate something about the nature of wanting, my mind drifts to Charlie rubbing against my legs in the snow, to the sick kitty's grateful eyes, and to the kitten Shhweetie who celebrates each meal by darting around looking for play.

The very thing I'm trying to understand keeps interrupting my understanding of it, pulling my thoughts back like a persistent tide.

What is the purpose of yearning? The question haunts me as I wake in the night, my chest tight with worry about cats in the cold.

Why does nature, which abhors waste and finds use for everything, create this exquisite ache of wanting what we can't quite reach?

Each passing day of these two months has unfolded a new chapter of their trust.

I've watched their bodies grow stronger even as their fear softens into something like hope.

Now they appear through the falling snow when they hear my car, and something in my chest both expands and tightens at the sight - this strange alchemy of love and worry that's become as much a part of my day as breathing.

The rhythm of my afternoons has shifted to include these moments: changing damp blankets for dry ones, watching steam rise from fresh warm water, and stirring their food while they weave between my legs.

What was once a simple daily walk has transformed into this complicated dance of joy and burden.

In the depth of Montana's ruthless winter nights, I lie awake with knots in my stomach, composing another desperate email to another rescue that will likely go unanswered.

I long for the day when this will all be a memory, when I can say "remember when I was feeding them every day?" and feel only the warmth of remembering, not this constant weight of responsibility.

And yet, even as I yearn for their safety, for someone to help, for this chapter to close, I know a part of me will ache for these moments too - for the way they've taught me how love can be both wound and salve.

Yearning is something we've all felt, and have all seen in others.

I see it in the parent who sends their child to college, proud but aching, who finds themselves setting an extra plate at dinner out of habit, who stands in a too-quiet doorway of an empty bedroom where morning chaos used to ensue.

It's in the dreamer who catches glimpses of her future self - more authentic, more alive - but can't quite grasp how to become her.

And it's in lovers separated by circumstance who feel phantom limb pain for someone they can still vividly touch in their dreams.

These yearnings work on us like water works on stone - there's the relentless surge of lake waves against the shoreline, the way each swell finds every angle and fold in the rock, wearing away what we thought was solid and unchangeable until deep grooves emerge. That's the pain of it - the raw, sharp edge of wanting.

But there's also the gentler side of the yearning - of the water communing with stone. The same force that creates ruts large enough to form rivers, tumbles rocks in lake beds for decades until they emerge impossibly smooth, perfectly polished.

I've felt this truth in my hands, rubbing stones from Lake Superior and now Flathead Lake between by fingers - each one a testament to how persistent love can soften even the hardest edges.

The parent's ache carves those deep grooves of missing, yes, but it also polishes their heart to a tenderness that teaches them to love with open hands.

The dreamer's yearning for her future self creates new pathways in uncharted territory by doing the opposite.

The lovers separated by distance feel the cutting depths of absence while their hearts are slowly smoothed into something more beautiful than before.

Scientists tell us nothing in nature exists without purpose. That "junk DNA" we once dismissed? It's made of exquisite intelligence. A whale's massive body, when it falls to the ocean floor I recently learned, creates an entire ecosystem that sustains life for decades.

Nature abhors a vacuum, eliminates waste, and finds purpose in everything.

So what then is the purpose of this ache? Tonight I'll wake again, worrying about cats in the cold, my emails to rescues still unanswered.

My heart feels scraped hollow with wanting to help them, with the weight of responsibility I never asked for but can't walk away from.

If everything in nature serves a purpose, then what's the point of this exquisite torture?

Normally, writing these blog posts brings me clarity around a question I'm holding. But not this time. For three days I've written and rewritten, and I can't conclude a thing.

Maybe yearning is nature's way of expanding our capacity for love, even when it hurts. Maybe it's how we become people who can hold more complexity than we thought possible - like learning to carry both the weight of responsibility and the lightness of those moments when a once-frightened cat rubs against your legs.

Or maybe it's simpler than that: maybe yearning is just the growing pain of a heart learning to care about something bigger than itself.

At least that's my 3am theory, as I lie here wondering if the blankets I left are keeping them warm enough.