The Cicada Season

摘要

The seasonal soundtrack of an outdoor childhood embeds itself deeply in the soul. The time-stilling silence of a Wisconsin winter cracks with the first tentative frog chorus in a thawing marsh. Robins and red-winged blackbirds trill and call back warmer days, breaking open a new cycle of seasons. Summer afternoons belong to the frenzied hum of treetop cicadas ruling over lazy, grasshopper days below. Cicada song is a seasonal invitation to lie down in the grass, to soak in warm afternoons before days shorten and the world stills into silence once more. The sounds of a season align an internal compass of time and place, even after the child has wandered away from the familiar landscape of her youth.