Crossing A Noisy Threshold

Spring can consider itself announced

There’s something happening here.

What it is ain’t exactly clear.

—Buffalo Springfield

It has been loud. Difficult-to-have-a-conversation loud. Even inside the house. In the 3-season porch? Forget it. And yet for all its disruption the sound has been strangely energizing. Vitalizing.

It started with the birds; first a few chirps and songs, gradually becoming more symphonic. Increasingly dense layers and textures of diverse honks and whistles and aural attacks. And then something new entered the cacophony; a voluble undertone deepening and broadening and qualitatively boosting the decibels.

Spring Peepers.

Peepers - more technically “Pseudacris crucifer” - emit a rapidly repetitive shrill, high-pitched peep. Hence, I suppose, the name. Peepers are rhythmically joined in the marsh symphony by upland chorus frogs - “Pseudacris feriarum” - whose lineage is similar (tree frogs) but whose song is distinctively different. Chorus frogs contribute a raspy, vibrating “crrrreeek”, something like a fingernail playing over the teeth of a plastic comb. Or a thumb pick over a washboard in an old-style bluegrass band. Together the peepers and chorus frogs mount a formidable atmospheric assault.

And I love it.

In recent years, in the course of an immersive dive into Celtic spirituality, I’ve gotten acquainted with St. Brigid of Kildare, patroness saint of Ireland, who is generally believed to have lived in the late 5th century. “Generally believed,” because there is some debate as to what extent Brigid was an actual historical person. There is a murky intermingling of the stories of Christian Brigid and Celtic Brigid, an ancient and beloved figure in Irish mythology. Said to have been born on the threshold of her home, Brigid has become the patron saint of transitions - shifts from here to there, from then to now, from now to...whatever is emerging. Her feast day is February 1, known as Imbolc by the Celts, or the birth of spring. In Minnesota, thinking of February 1 as the birth of spring is a stretch, but with climate change that association may not be far wrong.

In the meantime Brigid will have to take a back seat. It is the peepers and the chorus frogs who are the real harbingers of spring - threshold voices singing us into a fresh reality, a new beginning, a turn toward emergent life.

• Stirring after stillness

• Songs after silence

• Persistent life only thinly disguised by barrenness

And here is the thing: they are almost invisible. Tiny, greenish-brown and almost translucent, they blend perfectly into their surroundings. You almost never see them. But you hear them. A minute but mighty chorus erupting over the marshland and beyond, imploring us to wake up to life.

It’s not a bad invitation - standing on this liminal threshold or any other. Amid a choking culture war and a murderous literal war, both fueled by a spirit of coercive strangulation - an ongoing winter of discontent - the peepers and chorus frogs sing with a pastoral and even prophetic voice. Wake up to life.

Indeed.

On this emergent spring day, I’ll try to add my peep to the chorus.