Spring Singing

Yesterday I finally heard the peepers, one of my favorite sounds on earth. Last week, in the same woods, the vernal ponds were icy, silent. Now the painted turtles perched on logs, the frogs croaked their full-throated chorus, and the little peepers chirped their spring symphony.

I approached, slowly, humbly, respectfully. I know they do not like an audience. But no matter how quietly I creep up the trail, at a certain moment, they stop abruptly. I assume it is the vibration of my footsteps that silences them, but I don’t know. Also, in all my years of listening to these small virtuosos, I’ve never seen one. They are secretive, for such exuberant singers.

Last night it rained, with thunder and lightning. This is not spring weather. Walking in the woods, rejoicing in the awakening amphibians and reptiles, I was worrying. Yes, it’s spring, but there is too much war, too much greed, too much injustice. Too many trees have plagues, the pollinators are dying off, the seas are rising, and we have only 50 years of topsoil left. I zoom out and think of the big cycles, the ages of flourishing and destruction, described both in the fossil record and Vedic cosmology. Time is cycling, systems arise and decay. We exist in a pinprick of history.

As I approached the wetlands on my return trip, the peepers were going strong again. But I heard them pause and note my presence when I was still 300 feet away. They tentatively began again as I drew nearer and mounted an old stone wall to record their music, which continued for a few more seconds, and then ceased. I crouched there, listening, hoping for more. I imagined them in the cold water, clinging to a branch or the muddy edge, also crouching, also listening, waiting.

I don’t know how they perceive my presence, or why it disturbs them, but they don’t start again. My ignorance is a point of hope - there is so much I don’t know, which helps me humbly admit, in spite of all the terrible things I do know, that the future is beyond my understanding.

The peepers out-waited me, and I walked off down the trail, leaving them in peace. As I listened to the rain and rumbling thunder last night, I imagined them singing in the storm, a spring miracle, still having their say in the wounded and resilient world.