A Symphony of Peepers

Photo from The Wilderness Center in Ohio

The other night I wend my way in the dark along US Rt. 250 from Monterey back to McDowell, radio
blaring, when I hear ‘it’ – the sound of spring that sets my heart to sailing: peepers – tree frogs that sing so loud for their tiny bodies that you can hear them over the car radio with the windows up.

I turn off the radio and open the car window and fly in and out of their song as the car and I wax and wane to the parallel of Crab Run, whose steady roar of spring waters rushing to Richmond are the constant bass one-string pizzicato writ large into the night behind the peeper symphony.

More than the blooming flowers and the sunny warm-ish days, it is the peepers who tell me spring is here. . . darting across the road in mad dash when the rains come . . . singing into the night a desire so strong, so loud, it must be heard . . . their call is not mine, but it tugs the heart always and ever towards spring . . . spring . . . spring . . .