One night earlier this month, I went walking in the fields at the edge of town. It wasn't late, maybe nine or ten o'clock, but the sun had been down for more than an hour. The fat, gibbous moon was rising over the tree line.
Ahead of me fog lay across the field in long, white patches, and as I approached it, I felt myself grow more alert.
Small moths fluttered in the tall grasses in front of me. Then to my left through the shadows, a huge moth fluttered across the moon. I could almost feel the thumps of its wings against my face. I began to listen more closely to everything around me.
Then as I approached the woods, I was suddenly overcome by a chilling surge of insect songs calling out their mating words. Masses of katydids and tree crickets and ground crickets and field crickets and tree frogs filled up the space around me, covering me with wave after wave of messages, and I was held tightly in the pulsating, fluid fabric of the insects' growls and trills and screams and screeches and chirps and rattles and chatter and clicking and buzzing all gathered together in dense, erotic cacophony.
Until I was exhausted and full of the dark, ready for the sun.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with more notes on the seasons. In the meantime, take a walk at night. A few crickets and katydids may still be calling.
