Song of the Cicada

I was under a shade tree outside the Lincoln Memorial University library around this time last year when I noticed a Cicada singing somewhere above my head. It was a perfect mid-summer day, heavy and hot, almost foggy with humidity, so thickly green you can taste it, the sort of mountain day that feels strangely off without these insects in the backdrop. It was in the branches above me, filling my ears with its sustained droning, singing full out then winding down for a rest. Another one joined in across the parking lot with another in the distance up near the Arboretum trailhead. By the time those were done, the one over my head was at it again, so close and loud I could feel its vibrating sound raining down to me like a forest voice.

This year’s chorus is upon us again. It was a week ago and I was standing on the front porch resting from laboring in the yard and the container garden. It was another hot day, wonderfully humid, perfected only with the sudden invisible call from out in the dense trees, a welcomed and unexpected reminder saying, we’re back, to sing summer in, if you’ll listen. Will you sing with us?

These first few re-acquaintences each year make summer real for me, like catching a subtle first hint of fall in the air and knowing its undeniability. But Cicadas are anything but subtle. We’re so used to hearing them. The daily mundane often drags us into that calloused place where we do little more than notice the noise and go on about our business, perhaps wishing they’d just hush up. A bunch of them can be deafening. But their calls can slow us down and snap us back into the real of moment-to-moment living, if we listen and let them.

I was raised hearing them called three things - Cicadas, Jar Flies, and Katydids. I went for years as a child without really knowing what one looked like, believing these mysterious forest creatures to be sizable given such a racket. I would happen upon their discarded skins clinging in apparent sleep to tree bark, just paper-thin ghostly afterthoughts looking perfectly real, yet doubt the connection between such small things and such commanding sounds.

On this occasion with the insect so close, I tried following the sound with my eyes in hopes catching it singing, something I’d never managed. They just seem so intent on blending in and keeping their distance, like they’re shy about their voices. I've seen them perched quietly on limbs or tree trunks, let them hitch a ride on my shoulder for a while. They’re calm and friendly, apt to scale around on your arms and shoulders as long as you’ll have them and they don’t have somewhere else to be.

After finally spotted him (only males make the noise) I could see the its abdomen vibrating, the sound saturating the tree’s mass with its call to mate. Again, as when I was a child, I wondered how something so small could make such incredible sound. It's the expanding and contracting of an abdominal membrane that makes the loud clicking. Witnessing the animal in mid-singing, and so close, only heightened my appreciation and curiosity.

On another occasion, I was camping outside Sevierville and found I wasn’t as appreciative of their little concerts. As the sun was setting, dozens, if not hundreds, cranked up an impressive hour-long demonstration of decibel that nearly drove me from the field. It was the loudest I've ever heard, never quieting. On the other hand, it might have been normal. Perhaps I was simply hearing differently in that undistracted calm. It wasn't an upsetting noise, but, impossible to ignore, to filter out. When I got it in perspective, just me and the ground, the cicadas and the tree line, all of it spread out along the canvas of cleared field, I was better able to hear it as sound rather than “noise,” listening to what I was saying about myself inside, driven by their invisible conversation beyond my sight.

These few but powerful brushes with Cicada medicine continue gifting me a deeper appreciation for the animals. Something along the line of lessons I needed just when they happened, when I was ready to see and hear.

As with most animal medicine, lessons are evident in the metaphors they suggest in everyday life. From an approach of size and sound, we can easily liken the tiny Cicada, with its uncanny ability of being heard, to our community’s various struggles for educating others to truth concerning Appalachian life. We occasionally feel we have little real impact as individuals and small groups on important concerns of society. That our voices – as single sounds – make little dent in all the challenges swirling around us begging for voice. But a single voice can be very effective, loud and impacting. One intentioned person has the potential to put in motion massive ripples of change with one sustained, confident voice. This is like the song of the Cicada, an inordinately loud sound from a seemingly small, vulnerable animal. Combining multiple voices, organized in the intent of informing and changing, only increases the volume of a message and its impossibility of being ignored. Some voices are louder than others, not by volume, but by reach and effectiveness. Some project their opinions out to larger audiences, sounding off in unique ways whether through the voice, the written word, art, or performance. Some voices fall on uninterested, too-comfortable ears. Some send out the vibration of voice and action with the intention of only causing pain and discomfort, poisoned with blind negativity and intolerance. Our combined voices must be louder than these, every day.

On the next occasion you notice the Cicadas blaring their music from the trees at you and your busy life, slow down and ask yourself how loud and strong your song is and could be, how far it reaches, who hears it, and, as importantly, who sings with you.