I attended a week-long festival last month, in Illinois. My housing was in a big yurt, with a clear dome at the peak. It was set amongst a ring of middle-aged oak trees near a small pond. Every night, I fell asleep to distant drumming from the fire circle and the loud chorus of frogs from the pond.
I didn’t know I was missing them, to be honest. Somehw I’d forgotten the spring peepers and the tree frogs and their wild mad trillings. Gone from my recollection were the warty and wonderful toads who lived in sideways terracotta flower pots. There were box turtles then, too, that required a springtime turtle patrol willing to slam on the brakes and press the button for the four-way flashers, leap from the car and move the slowpoke to the verge.
Frogs and turtles were so present, so plentiful that they were the backdrop of summers past.
Those profundo frogs in the pond took me back in time and place and my heart constricted to remember. I haven’t stopped for a turtle in years, haven’t sat in a rusty metal chair in the evening, watching lightning bugs, listening to tree frogs.
We’ve done this, this lessening of the natural world. We humans are responsible for these quiet summer nights, this uninterrupted travel.
Last night, I sat in a folding chair and watched the lightning bugs in their giddy blinking. There was a train whistle, music and laughter from the neighbors’ house, traffic noises from the bridge. No peepers, no profundos. Only a desperate silence that provoked such longing, such dreams of summers passed.
I miss the songs from the lilypads myself. Sometimes I drive to the walmart park at the edge…go down to the picnic table there and close my eyes. The croaks and chrips take me back to my great grandmas porch. I can smell the pondscum and wet grass. I can slow everything down, chase a lighin bug, and rewind time.
Byron, I too have noticed the diminution of turtles. But for what comfort it may offer, this spring, during frog mating season, Cullowhee (and Maryland’s Eastern Shore!) were still rich in frogs: peepers, bufos, spade foot toads, even the occasional barking of the wood frogs. The tree frogs forecast this week’s rain, and I haven’t seen such a good year for lightning bugs since I’ve lived here. So, once we’re back from Iceland, come ease your heart in beautiful Cullowhee, and we’ll light a candle for the indicator species of this troubled world. 🙂
I would love that. And also to hear about Iceland.
More and more we have conversations with those close to us of how to have hope within despair. Sitting on metal chairs and watching the lightening bugs – it’s a teeter-totter.