Behold, it is the year of the cicadae. Yes, I know, it sounds like the title of a Stephen King book, but it isn’t. It’s glorious reality, and I, for one, am very grateful to be part of it once again in my life.
I have taken a moment from my crazy busy life just to sit on my front porch and be serenaded by these mystical, rare, miniature specimens of nature. It truly is a miracle. We are, or should be, grateful to be privy to this miraculous gestation that takes 17 years to complete.
Now, granted, some 32 years ago, which I recollect very clearly as being quite a year for the cicadae, I was less than thrilled.
My oldest child was starting kindergarten and we had just moved from a genuine neighborhood to the relative greenery of the less developed south end of my island home. These little guys were less than thrilling for me then. The thickness of nearly literal sheets of them was wafting around my face and it was nothing near romantic. I had to walk my son to the school bus with a newspaper and an umbrella just to keep them from dive-bombing us. I had to close my windows to make a phone call as their song was so loud and all surrounding foliage was simply coated with them, or their shells.
Now, I am grateful that they are just doing what they do as part of our great Gaia. As an older person with so much more life in my old kit bag, I am thrilled that they can still do it; I take my humble opinion and my coffee to the porch, sit in a beach chair, and just listen, letting them serenade me with their oh-so-rare concert of nature. Am I a hopeless romantic? So what if I am? There are many of us, and we are the ones who thrill at the sounds of the cardinal and the cicada.
This is our planet ... the one we’re killing, by the way, in the name of profit. However, I have faith in humanity and I believe we are just seriously beginning to move in the right direction on that front. It will take time and sacrifice and effort, but we’ll get there. In the meantime, Mother Nature is fighting like a mom for her life and for her children. Now, to prove it, she sends us these glorious critters we call bugs (a word, by the way, that has no scientific specificity whatsoever) with their personal concerto for us to enjoy as we examine the shells they leave behind and watch them buzz by in a fairy’s clip of motion.
Instead of waiting for this extremely short, rare, and spectacular span of their lifetime to pass, I mourn the morning I get outside and can no longer hear the voices of these amazing little creatures whose presence we can witness only four or five times in our entire lifetime.
We can’t say they have no impact on our planet but their impact is minimal; man does much more damage every minute than these multi-colored and winged insects do while eating and burying their eggs every 17 years. They don’t know anything about us, about this planet, about how we feel about them, or what we do while we work the land above them. They live, most of their life cycle as pupae, under it. They only know that this is what they do, and when they rise to the air and spend their short span in the atmosphere, they sing through it, all day, every day.
So, grab a coffee and hit the porch, take a bike into the woods or park the car off road and just listen. Join their party. Hear their song. Immerse yourself in the moment and the miracle. It will be a long time before we hear it again. If we’re holding our infant in our arms for this particular tour of the Cicadae in performance, realize that baby will be graduating high school when the show plays again. If we are holding our grandchild in our arms this time around, it may be our last chance to hear this cicadae band in concert, ever.
As Elton John once, wisely, said, “Don’t wish it away …”
As for me, I’m going back outside right now to be an audience member once more. I’ll hold the moment in my memory and let the laundry wait for me.
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