Crickets On the Voice Note

Nuala & my kiddo (because no one ever takes a picture of Mom walking the dog)

When Nuala and I walk a mile or two down the country roads, I leave the phone at home. At last, I am finally practicing what I have long understood: when I walk, the only companions I need are the dog and the animate everything.  

Except for when I bring the phone along and catch up on voice notes, of course. 

(Of course I break this screen-free stroll rule. I’m a human who is fueled by the forgetting that gets me back to the remembering. And, because my walk down this particular country road is predicated on paying the mortgage on the lovely house at the quiet five-way crossroads, and I need to honor my commitment to my clients so I can take part in this economic arrangement. Plus, the animate everything does include the iPhone, too.)

And sometimes, when I’m walking and talking, the crickets interject.

A writing coaching client told me how she imagined Nuala and me on a moonlit walk because she could hear the steady music of the insect world acting as a background chorus.

It happened to be midday when I left the note, but her observation cracked me open.

The animate world, all the aliveness of the vast hidden population, is always already there. It clamors to be recognized. Bug song slips into the digital cracks around my voice and then travels across a continent to be heard.

And, yet, the vast wild everything thrives without our recognition, too.

(With the exception of plants like sweetgrass, which thrives when humans harvest it in a sustainable way. I’ve mistakenly assumed that everyone in my circles knows and loves the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer, the botanist, author, and member of the Potawatomi nation, who so many of us know through the groundbreaking book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. If you haven’t read it yet, do!)

The Crickets Have Always Known Every Story

With that brief, one might say throwaway, comment about ambient noise on a Voxer message,  I am truly changed.

The fact that the placeness of my walk came through so strongly and unintentionally feels significant in a way that’s going to keep shaping my words and relationships.

And it changes me in an immediate, sensory way. I would have said that the insect sound is only really noticeable after sunset when, in fact, they never stop singing at any point during the warmer months. Now, I hear their steady chatter the moment my head clears from preoccupation. 

We don’t know what the ancestors’ voices would have sounded like because their languages have died out or evolved beyond all recognition into modern tongues. But, we can assume that the sounds they’d make to soothe a baby or cry out in ecstasy or pain would sound much like our own.

We’re sure that the natural soundscape has changed because there are fewer birds and insects in the skies and trees. But, we can be sure that nature would have had a chatter - deafening in period of stillness and peace, muted in moments when danger lurked in the forest.

When Nuala and I go out on our daily walks, and when I can give myself leave to leave my phone at home, that’s when the stories tend to find me. The characters begin to speak. The three crows overhead reveal a folktale I need to revive.

I always credited this access to creative source to the act of moving and being away from the screen.

But really, I think the crickets are feeding me clues and asking me to tune back in to a time when the only sounds beyond the door were those of the birds, the bees, and the wind.

That’s where the myths live, after all.