FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL AUGUST 20, 1999

Blue

sky.

Different places have different aural textures. My trip to Baltimore reminded me of this difference quite plainly. All night in Baltimore the chrrr of locusts high in the trees - or was it cicadas - loud and long and all night. We have very little of that noise here. The morning birds here are different - heavy with the robin, the morning dove, a blackbird. I did not recognize the morning sounds in Baltimore. At night, down the hill at the pond here in Fairwater, the sound of frogs, not locusts. At our "farm" in Marquette County, there will be a chorus of frogs in the pot hole, too, but with a different texture than Fairwater's. This difference of texture is not something I would want to measure scientifically - it is enough to get the gestalt of each.

A heavy dew on the windows of the pick-up this morning. Someone is cranking the turn of seasons, at least a little. This wetness is a sign.

The sunlight lays on the leaves of all the trees like a thick, yellow powder. No breeze. The pond is still where it is open; much of it is grown up again with algae. The algae makes the King of Fairwater unhappy. I pray for the good growth and long life of the algae. I would not go so far as to put fertilizers into the pond surreptitiously. At least I think I would not.

There is a bank of clouds far to the northwest. What does it portend? I have not been paying much attention to weather forecasts these days; it seems enough to have the weather. Our morning jewels of dew. A little humidity, hanging in the distance.

Comments

[Dave]

Those were katydids. Cicadas make that high-pitched whine you hear during the day. They are completely unrelated, BTW, in seperate orders of insects.

One of the fist things my brother remarked upon ahen he moved back from Wisconsin last month was how much he missed the nightly stidulation of the northern true katydids.

[Tom Montag]

Thanks for the information, Dave. So what we've got in Wisconsin is the northern true katydid - I'll log that for future reference.

[Dave]

No, I'm sorry - i said that wrong. They're what he missed when he was living out there, because they only occur here in the East.

[Tom Montag]

Dave--Thanks for the clarification! I suppose now, so I know the names of the things that were making noise here less than a month ago, I'll have to go do some looking. Because we should know the names of things: that's the first rule of clear writing, I sometimes think.