White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.
crickets
9/14/2018
The dampness thickens into drizzle. Its soundtrack: the unending trill of tree crickets. The forest begins to glisten like a salamander.
10/2/2017
Another cold, clear morning. When the jays and squirrels stop yammering, the silence seems unusually thick. Then it hits me: no crickets.
9/14/2017
Small birds flit through the tops of the locust trees—migrating warblers, no doubt. Birds of passage. Every now and then the cricket pauses.
9/13/2016
A catbird calls so incessantly I begin to doubt it’s a catbird until it flies past. You can’t hear the ocean here but we have tree crickets.
8/6/2016
Hard rain for less than a minute followed by an hour of dripping, accompanied by a cricket chorus. Pale soapwort flowers glow in the sun.
8/3/2016
Overcast and cool. The irregular chirps of a cricket in the tall grass. A Canada goose flying over the ridge all alone honks twice.
6/14/2016
A cricket in the wall chirps more quickly now that the sun is on it. I sneeze and he falls silent. A great spangled fritillary careens past.
9/27/2015
Two crickets are having a singing contest among the stiltgrass, which is now quite red and swept back in one direction as if with a comb.
9/13/2015
Windy and cool; the sun goes in and out. A flock of wild geese—their raucous cries. In the silence that follows, a tree cricket’s trill.
8/31/2015
In the course of an hour, the only bird calls are from a couple of crows. But there are four kinds of crickets, a cicada, a distant jet.
8/25/2015
Clear and cool. Falling walnut leaves spin through the deep shadows at the edge of the woods. Above the crickets, a distant motorcycle.
8/15/2015
Hazy and warm. As the sun climbs, the cicada chorus grows, and the field cricket in the garden chirps faster and faster.
8/12/2015
Cloudy and cool. Cricket trills and ticks are joined by chipmunk tocks. A tulip tree leaf sails in wide circles with its stem for a rudder.