Happy New Cicada Moon

Cicadas are known for screaming in trees and leaving molted carcasses everywhere like creepy decorations for children to use in games of “terrorize my phobic sibling”.   Oklahoma is home to over 30 different species of cicada and although some emerge in the spring, I tend to associated them more with late summer, the Lughnasadh/Lammas season.    I’m one of the weirdoes who enjoys their sound.   One cicada screaming at rock-concert decibels next to your head might be infuriating, but when the hot summer evening fills with the drone of hundreds singing the orange sky into blackness, it can be a trance-inducing experience.

According to the Wikipedia article, cicadas are known around the world and from ancient sources.  Their bright markings and large shape have been used as decoration and even money.  They have represented music, rebirth, and nonchalance in different cultures.   Late summer is a common association, with one species, neotibicen canicularis referred to as the “dog-day cicada” and is endemic to eastern North America stretching as far west as NE Oklahoma.   Although the time of Lughnasadh is the first harvest, reaping, a time of endings and the death of John Barleycorn,  in our modern culture it has the flavor of beginnings also.  The cicada, to me, is a good representative of that part of the season. 

Fall is the time to begin a new year of school.  Kids return from camp, football practice begins, stores put up lists of supplies for each grade.  We buy new school clothes, presumably to replace clothes that we’ve outgrown, but there are also social meanings – more “grown up” clothes, fashion choices related to self expression or belonging to particular groups.  Cicadas also molt off their old clothes and enter a new phase of their lives.

But the excitement of a new school year also comes with a leaving behind – last year’s teachers, schedules, the skills and knowledge mastered, or not mastered, perhaps even schools and friends.  In 2020, our whole concept of school seems like it could be left behind as teachers and parents struggle to manage life inside chaotic expectations of governments and administrations.  Even within this shifting flow there is still a looming sense of long, steady work still to come.   The cooler weather will eventually arrive; there will be holiday season plans to make.   But first, we molt.  We have long days of striping off the old and building up the new while the cicadas sing and buzz the second half of the year along.

This process can’t be rushed.  Time passes at its own rate.  Tearing down and building up take as long as they take, as much work as they take.  There are no shortcuts.  The cicada can also be our reminder of this.   Depending on species, cicada larva may live one or several years underground before emerging.   Oklahoma also has some populations of periodical cicadas called Magicicada, the entire group of which cycles together:  living underground as larvae and not to be seen at all until they emerge together as a swarm after 13 or 17 years!

As we settle in to the hot dry days of late summer, dreaming of cool nights and pumpkin spice, let the song of the cicada serenade you.  Harvest is coming. There is work to do before we can let go of the summer and relax in the cool of fall.