The song of the crickets
it fails not in its season
night or day.
*****
August 2. The crickets on the causeway make a steady creak, on the dry pasture-tops an interrupted one. August 2, 1854
August 3. At the east window. A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano. August 3, 1852
August 4. It is now the royal month of August. As my eye rests on the blossom of the meadow-sweet in a hedge, I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn. I am as dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with the season's wine. August 4, 1851
August 4. Have had a gentle rain, and now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. August 4, 1852
August 4. Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached. August 4, 1856
[Spooner says Thoreau's alder cricket is the snowy tree cricket. Thoreau's Vision of Insects & the Origins of American Entomology. Adults of the species can be found from mid-July to mid-November, sometimes be so high in oak trees that its chirp is the only way to identify it. It lives in shrubs, vines, fruit trees, broadleaved trees, and oaks, and can rarely be found in grass. ~ Wikipedia ]
August 6. It is at length cloudy, and still behind the hills, and very grateful is this anticipation of the fall, — coolness and cloud, and the crickets steadily chirping in mid-afternoon. August 6, 1854
August 6. Hear the autumnal crickets. . . . The mole cricket creaks along the shore. August 6, 1855
[Mole crickets live almost entirely below ground, digging tunnels of different kinds for feeding, escape from predators, attracting a mate (by singing), mating, and raising of young.~ Wikipedia]
August 7. The cool nocturnal creak of the crickets is heard in the mid-afternoon. August 7, 1854
August 11. I have heard since the 1st of this month the steady creaking cricket. August 11, 1854
August 12. As I stand on the bank there, I find suddenly that I hear, low and steady, under all other sounds, the creak of the mole cricket by the riverside. It has a peculiarly late sound, suggestive of the progress of the year. It is the voice which comes up steadily at this season from that narrow sandy strip between the meadow and the water’s edge. You might think it issued from that small frog, the only living thing you see, which sits so motionless on the sand. But the singer is wholly out of sight in his gallery under the surface.
Creak creak, creak creak, creak creak, creak creak.
It is a sound associated with the declining year and recalls the moods of that season. It is so unobtrusive yet universal a sound, so underlying the other sounds which fill the air, —the song of birds, rustling of leaves, dry hopping sound of grasshoppers, etc., —that now, in my chamber, I can hardly be sure whether I hear it still, or remember it, it so rings in my ears. August 12, 1858
[Male mole crickets have an exceptionally loud song; they sing from a burrow that opens out into the air in the shape of an exponential horn. The song is an almost pure tone, modulated into chirps.~Wikipedia]
August 14. I sit three-quarters up the hill. The crickets creak strong and loud now after sunset. No word will spell it. It is a short, strong, regular ringing sound, as of a thousand exactly together, — though further off some alternate, — repeated regularly and in rapid time, perhaps twice in a second. Methinks their quire is much fuller and louder than a fortnight ago. August 14, 1854
[ Crickets chirp at different rates depending on their species and the temperature. According to Dolbear's law, counting the number of chirps produced in 14 seconds by the snowy tree cricket, and adding 40 will approximate the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. ~Wikipedia]
August 15. That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season. August 15, 1852
August 15. But now it is cooler and beautifully clear at last after all these rains, and the crickets chirp with a still more autumnal sound. August 15, 1853
August 17. My life flows with a deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by the summer heats. This coolness comes to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere. The stillness seems more deep and significant. Each sound seems to come from out a greater thoughtfulness in nature, as if nature had acquired some character and mind. The cricket, the gurgling stream, the rushing wind amid the trees, all speak to me soberly yet encouragingly of the steady onward progress of the universe. August 17, 1851
August 17. Dawn . . . The creak of the crickets sounds louder. August 17, 1852
August 18. What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, — as if the rest of the year were down-hill, and if we had not performed anything before, we should not now? The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late! The sound of the crickets, even in the spring, makes our hearts beat with its awful reproof, while it encourages with its seasonable warning. It matters not by how little we have fallen behind; it seems irretrievably late. The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life. The sound of so many insects and the sight of so many flowers affect us so, — the creak of the cricket and the sight of the prunella and autumnal dandelion. They say, "For the night cometh in which no man may work." August 18, 1853
August 18. As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass! August 18, 1856
August 19. The cricket's is a note which does not attract you to itself. It is not easy to find one . . . The cricket's chirp now fills the air in dry fields near pine woods. August 19, 1851
August 19. It is cool with a considerable northwesterly wind, so that we can sail to Fair Haven. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. You notice the louder and clearer ring of crickets, and the large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore. August 19, 1858
August 20. In the morning the crickets snore, in the afternoon they chirp, at midnight they dream. August 20, 1841
August 20. I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed, — for I pull away the withered grass with my hands, — uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know.
Who ever distinguished their various notes,
which fill the crevices in each other's song?
It would be a curious ear, indeed,
that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard,
and traced even the earth-song home,
each part to its particular performer.
I am afraid to be so knowing.
They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one's song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth's axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night or day. August 20, 1851
August 20. It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. August 20, 1858
August 21. There are as few or fewer birds heard than flowers seen. The sound of the crickets gradually prevails more and more. I hear the year falling asleep. August 21, 1852
August 21. Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. It kept up a steady shrilling (unlike the interrupted creak of the cricket) August 21, 1853
August 22. The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore. August 22, 1856
August 23. When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the roadside this afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket or a grasshopper close to me, quite clear, almost like a bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring, incessant, not intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belonging to day. August 23, 1851
August 23. About 8 p.m.- To Cliffs, moon half full. As I go up the back road, I hear the loud ringing creak of crickets, louder singers on each apple tree by the roadside, with an intermittent pulsing creak . . .I hear a faint metallic titter from a bird, so faint that if uttered at noonday it would not be heard, — not so loud as a cricket. I cannot remember the last moon. August 23, 1852
August 23. Hear the mole cricket nowadays. August 23, 1857
August 24. Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick . . . nearby, a large white ash which though healthy bore a mark or scar where a branch had been broken off and stripped down the trunk. B. said that one of his ancestors, perhaps his grandfather, before the Revolution, went to climb this tree, and reached up and took hold of this branch, which he stripped down, and this was the scar! Under the dead bark of this tree saw several large crickets of a rare kind. They had a peculiar naked and tender look, with branched legs and a rounded incurved front. August 24, 1857
August 25. Yesterday was a hot day, but oh, this dull, cloudy, breezy, thoughtful weather in which the creak of the cricket sounds louder, preparatory to a cheerful storm! How grateful to our feelings is the approach of autumn! We have had no serious storm since spring. August 25, 1852
August 26. The wind roars amid the pines like the surf. You can hardly hear the crickets for the din, or the cars. Indeed it is difficult to enjoy a quiet thought. Such a blowing, stirring, bustling day, - what does it mean ?
August 26. Tuesday. More wind and quite cold this morning, but very bright and sparkling, autumn-like air, reminding of frosts to be apprehended, also tempting abroad to adventure. The fall cricket — or is it alder locust? — sings the praises of the day. August 26, 1856
August 26. The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yesterday's copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer . . . The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound . . .The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct. August 26, 1859
August 27. Crickets sound much louder after the rain in this cloudy weather. August 27, 1852
August 29. Might I not walk a little further, till I hear new crickets, till their creak has acquired some novelty, as if they were a new species whose habitat I had reached? August 29, 1851
August 29. We walk invested by sound, -— the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. August 29, 1858
August 31. Now especially the crickets are seen and heard on dry and sandy banks and fields, near their burrows, and some hanging, back down, to the stems of grass, feeding. I entered a dry grassy hollow where the cricket alone seemed to reign, — open like a bowl to the sky. August 31, 1859
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
tinyurl.com/HDTAugustCricket
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