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Folks have been staying home and cultural venues shutting down during the pandemic of 2020. Yet, still, these sultry mid-summer nights are awash in music. And I’m not talking one of these ensembles we’re seeing patched together on Zoom.
No, I’m hearing this music right now, tonight, in the flesh—no social distancing involved—emanating so bright from the shrubs and trees that it illuminates the darkness.
For most of us, I’m afraid, it’s a sound that may be so ubiquitous, so deeply set in memory, that, like the constant background hum and hiss of the rest of city life, we don’t even notice anymore.
One can quite accurately estimate the
temperature from the frequency of the
snowy tree cricket’s pulsing chirrs.
But hey, I’m the wonder guy; I can’t not notice. In fact, this summer of COVID, under the pall of tragedy, fear and uncertainty, I’ve decided life’s too short not to engage Nature’s night music, sit with it a while…and really listen. And here’s what I’m hearing:
MULTI-PART HARMONY
You know how, in most musical pieces, the rhythm acts as a sort of pump that impels the notes? The heartbeat of my night music is the bright, pulsing performance of the snowy tree cricket. Synchronized like a fine symphony orchestra’s string section, it emanates from low bushes, wrapping me in its crystalline tone.
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| Snowy Tree Cricket - PHOTO: www.BugGuide.net |
This delicate, pale green cousin of the stockier, brown or black house or field cricket is elusive; I’ve never run into one without purposely looking. Hiding, often under the branches, it’s the one sometimes called the “thermometer cricket,” because one can quite accurately estimate the temperature from the frequency of the snowy tree cricket’s pulsing trills.*