Summer Sounds

The thrumming buzz of the cicada heralds the arrival of high summer for me - that time of year associated with lazy, hazy days spent sitting on a deck and sipping a beer. Well, it's early August, and goddess knows I've spent many happy hours with friends on the patio drinking all sorts of inebriants, but they have not been accompanied by cicada song. In my part of the world the summer has been wet and cool - not so much that I haven't been able to enjoy the aforementioned pleasures, but enough to retard the parade of summer blossoms. Everything is late this year, including the sweet sounds of the cicadas.
I always make note of the "firsts" of each season: the first robin in spring, the first butterfly, the first dreaded, albeit beautiful, red-gold leaf (I guess you can tell what seasons I prefer), and of course, the first buzz of the cicadas, signifying the dog-days of summer. I usually hear the cicadas by the end of June or early July. After seventeen years underground, the nymph cicadas rise up out of the earth, then climb trees to finally emerge from their membranes as fully formed adults. I was beginning to despair that this year's generation of cicadas wouldn't complete their life cycle. What would happen if it was just too cold and damp for the cicadas to rise and shine? This is a question of biology I'm not equipped to answer. Fortunately, I needn't have worried.
Yesterday, which happened to be a warm and glorious summer day, I went for a picnic in the park with my good friend, Doe. I had just finished voicing my concerns to her about the delayed song of the cicadas, when lo and behold, the joyous buzz of summer landed on our ears! We looked at each other and laughed with glee. It was like hearing an old, familiar song. We revelled in the perfect synchronicity of the moment. How could the day go wrong after that? And it didn't. It was the perfect beginning to a perfect day.
Seventeen isn't just a very good year for old-fashioned crooners, it's a good one for cicadas, too. They crawl out of the dark earth into the light of day, and all those soft summer nights, serenading us with song that's a reminder to celebrate summer, and life itself. Blessed be.
- G. P.