Winter Is Coming...And It's MY Fault!

. Every year they take me by surprise -- the crickets. Since they are a "normal" background sound, that's where they stay: unnoticed until finally something brings them to my attention. I always welcome that moment, like the return of an old friend. It probably doesn't hurt either, that my associations are pleasant ones, especially as influenced by one of the animated film critters seen during my boyhood, Jiminy Cricket, an amiable character. It's usually sometime in August that the crickets come to the fore, though they may have been singing much earlier in the year.

. There is something a bit melancholy, yet attractive about late August in New England. On the one hand, the lazy, hot days of July, bringing long daylight and extravagant plant growth, have passed. But in August the insects are mostly gone (except my beloved crickets and the ladybugs, also depicted favorably in the old animated films). When hiking one finds that the streams are lower and easier to ford, and the somewhat cooler temperatures and drier air are more pleasant for a trek. The month has a special lighting that is a little more intimate, especially the morning and afternoon illumination in the forest.

. Yet it is tinged with the knowledge that summer is coming to an end, and I always regret it, especially here in Maine where winters may linger for six months. As you know the constellations sort of wheel around during the passing of the year so that the ones you see rising at dawn in the summer, are the same ones setting and gone in the winter twilight. If you stay up late enough you can get a sort of "sneak preview" when winter constellations rise just before dawn.

. I have a pseudo-superstition that the appearance of Orion in the morning twilight is what brings on the winter! I am often up just before sunrise. So I theorize that if I am careful to not look southeast I can delay winter.
. But every year he tricks me! This morning in my darkened living room I heard what sounded like my cat furiously and continuously licking himself. But then I remembered he is visiting in my neighbor's house. Then I thought "Oh no. That may be leaf-eating insects. People say the noise of many eating together is clearly audible. So I rushed out to see if I could save my viburnum bush which I had been babying. Fortunately, no bugs. It was my garden hose reel dripping loudly since someone accidentally left the valve on. Oops! Looking in the direction of the hose caught me off guard and smack-dab in view was the Mighty Hunter. Damn! So I am to blame, I admit. I just hope winter is short and mild, the heck with the skiers!