I camped up on the plateau last night. First time camping in maybe 8 years and haven’t camped up there in closer to 40. It was weird though. No crickets. No tree frogs. That iconic wall of noise at night. Gone.

The only sounds were intermittent motorcycles, trucks, trains, barges and planes. Everything you don’t want to hear and none of the things you do.

It was depressing. It’s been bothering me all day and we had them last year. Is it just my area or is this the new norm?

  • Zombie@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    11 hours ago

    The urge to leave began with the idea of cricket song. Dex couldn’t pinpoint where the affinity had come from. Maybe it’d been a movie they watched, or a museum exhibit. Some multimedia art show that sprinkled in nature sounds, perhaps. They’d never lived anywhere with cricket song, yet once they registered its absence in the City’s soundscape, it couldn’t be ignored. They noted it while they tended the Meadow Den Monastery’s rooftop garden, as was their vocation. It’d be nicer here if there were some crickets, they thought as they raked and weeded. Oh, there were plenty of bugs—butterflies and spiders and beetles galore, all happy little synanthropes whose ancestors had decided the City was preferable to the chaotic fields beyond its border walls. But none of these creatures chirped. None of them sang. They were city bugs and therefore, by Dex’s estimation, inadequate.

    This is from the first page of A Psalm For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers. Your post reminded me of it, you may enjoy reading it.

    • jay2@beehaw.orgOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 hours ago

      I did enjoy it. Thanks for posting it. I’m considering bringing Tool - Aenima up with me tonight just to put on Disgustipated for the 20 minutes of crickets. I know the affinity of a good cricket song.