Alongside a Gibbous Orange Moon

Saturday, April 17, 2004

Spring Peepers, Toads, and the Coming of the Locusts

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

There is one hour of the day that I never want to be awake, a time I think is too late to still be up and too early to be waking up. I call it 4 am. That is the time we awoke today.

And before five, in the dark of a remarkably cold Floridian morning, we were on the road. For at least an hour, all we saw was black as we drove north, but eventually the whole sky turned a subtle yet dark grey. Then a glow appeared on the eastern side of us, which grew into a fulgurating sun holding fast to the horizon. (And Florida is virtually all horizon.) A fingernail paring of a moon appeared low in the sky, and we stopped at a rest area. Walking through a cold and dreamy twilight, we entered the restrooms.

When we exited, two or three minutes later, it was full morning. The sun reigned over us once more.

We drove. It took five hours to make it out of Florida, and we had four more states to go. Nancy drove fewer shifts than I did today but longer ones. She ended up driving three minutes shy of nine hours.

It takes a long time to drive this far.

The day was clear and easy. We drove through Georgia without any trouble. Then, after we crossed the river into South Carolina, the road narrowed to two lanes heading in each direction. Traffic slowed and accidents popped up in the Carolinas, slowing us down, even tho a vehicle never blocked the roadway. We passed four accidents, losing time in the process.

By the time we reached Virginia, we thought the trip couldn’t end, but Virginia stretches on interminably. We hit northern Virginia, even about thirty miles out from the Beltway, and the road was dark save for the headlights and taillights of thousands of cars. Occasionally, traffic slowed almost to a stop, but we continued, we made our exits, we paid our 50-cent toll, we took the Wolf Trap exit, and we found ourselves once again in the dark woods and twisting and dipping roads of my sister-in-law’s neighborhood.

The trip took us 16 hours and 23 minutes today, almost an hour and a half more than the trip down to Florida. Maybe it was that extra mile and an eighth we drove today—making today, officially, our longest day-long drive ever: 985.8 miles.

At least we arrived early enough that our niece Shannon was still awake. We stored our carry-in luggage, talked a little, and watched the end of the movie Finding Nemo.

Betsy and Steve now await the return of the big brood of seventeen-year locusts, which return to the DC area this year. I was living in Washington, DC, not for the last awakening, but for the one before that. Our trees, our lawn, every bush, the sidewalks were almost completely covered with an orange-brown humming mass of locusts. I couldn’t walk the streets without killing scores of them. It was one of the most amazing instances of thronging animal life I had ever experienced, greater I think in some ways that the termite storms of my Ghanaian childhood.

The woods around here thrummed with spring peepers. A lovely sound, it means spring has arrived—at least to Virginia. Tim went outside tonight to catch toads. Four of them were resting on the pool cover—imagining that the quarter-inch of water trapped atop the plastic sheeting was a pond. When I went out with Tim, one of the toads was chirping vibrantly and romantically, and we shone the light on him and saw his throat puffed out into a tight ball beneath his jaw as he called to the other three toads on the plastic. When Tim caught the toad, it chirped a small musical chirp—something touchingly plaintive and quiet—asking for release.

Tim quickly let him return to the wild, where he sat solemnly on the blue sheeting awaiting his chance to continue his race.

Quote of the Day (Tim): It used to be that he did that for the Huthodex, but he hasn’t done that for a long time.

(Whatever that means.)

Sign of the Day: Floyd’s Love Nest

(Get this: the name of a daycare center.)
||+ permalink Comments Geofhuth 11:52 PM