The Ubiquitous Yellow Flowers (beautiful but probably invasive) – Photo: L. Weikel

Late Summer Buzz

No, I’m not referencing the name of an exotic cocktail to be enjoyed while sitting ‘round a crackling campfire. Nor am I alluding to the effects I might feel should I be imbibing said exotic cocktail.

Instead, I’m describing the constant drone of crickets or perhaps other similarly situated bugs that begins during late summer nights. It’s a curious sound, really, for it sometimes can meld so seamlessly into the background that we almost don’t hear it. It’s sort of almost the natural equivalent of static – something that comes to our attention when it suddenly stops and we realize how profound the silence is when that background drone is absent.

My sense is that the drone is crickets; crickets that are nearing the end of their lives and are, in their way, stuck on their ‘on’ switch. For whatever reason, they can’t stop. They’re not trying to get individual attention – you, know, attract a mate – the way they were at the beginning of their life cycle.

Death Drone

Now they’re just holding a single note.  One very long, very monotonous note. A droning tone. This droning, which I suppose is not actually, technically, droning since it’s much higher pitched than a conventional (or even dictionary definition of drone – which almost always specifies ‘low’) strikes me as a death call.

They’re stuck on ‘on.’ Until they’re shut down. Or shut off. Permanently.

Mother Nature’s Night Sounds

I’m writing about this phenomenon because I’m sitting on my couch with the front door open and the sounds of nature are keeping me company. The death drone of the crickets is the most noticeable – at least at the moment.

Lucky for me, it’s the rare car that whisks past at this time of night. Instead, I’m treated to Mother Nature’s night sounds.

Last night I had a screech owl trilling right outside my front door. It had to have been hanging out in the towering pine trees leaning wearily against each other just across the road. Strangely, I was awakened at 5:18 a.m. to a couple of screech owls chatting just outside our bedroom window. It was their pointed conversation that penetrated my dream and called my attention back to this Middle World.

What’s That?

I have to laugh: just as I was writing that last sentence, the slow-building bray of one of my adored donkeys that graze on the hillside behind our home began its deep yet vague, hard to pinpoint, call-of-the-sand-people sounding moan** that ends with its inevitable onkey-honk. For the life of me, I’m always caught off guard when I hear the first couple seconds of that very odd exhortation. I don’t know why – it’s one of my favorite sounds (day or night). Yet my mind always pings off that sound initially, insists that my ears zero in on the source, demanding I make sense of it. You’d think I’d recognize it immediately by now.

Which makes me wonder: why am I always fooled?

I ask that question and suddenly a cricket or three suddenly stop holding their note. It’s almost a relief from the pressure I didn’t realize was building in my head. My brain can relax, and the reprieve allows me to notice other crickets holding a slightly different note.

All of this reminds me of an especially peculiar ‘vision’ I awoke to the other morning. I swear, I opened my eyes and the image below was the first thing I saw. It took me a moment, as you can imagine, to make sense of it.

Rocco’s Toy – Photo: L. Weikel

It’s a reflection of a small plastic toy that Karl put on his nightstand, an odd souvenir from a friendship he’d struck with one of the longest attorney-client relationships I had in my practice: a man I cared for and represented for just under 30 years.

He passed away a few years ago. And I think of him more often than I – or he, I imagine – would’ve ever thought I would.

We’re entering that season, I guess.

**Surely you ‘get’ this reference to the scene in Star Wars – Episode IV (the first one) when Luke meets Obi-Wan for the first time?

(T-823)