In Northern Survival, there’s a scene where John is complaining about how noisy nature is at night. Whether it’s owls hooting or peepers peeping, the night air is a chorus of musical creatures, and they keep him awake.
Olive says this to him: “You don’t believe me now but wait. You’ll see. The first night you lay in bed surrounded by four walls with the window closed, you’ll wonder where those sounds are. You’ll start to wonder if everything on the planet is dead. It will be so quiet, so void of life you’ll feel like you’re sleeping in a tomb.”
I wrote this from experience. Several years ago, when the kids were small, we owned a pop-up trailer. From mid-May until mid-October, we slept in it every night. It was only in the backyard, but the kids and I thought of it as an adventure. We were all together, and we talked in the dark until we nodded off to sleep.
The canvas of the camper kept out the weather, but not the sounds. We heard our rooster go off at 5:00 am, the ducks quacking spells throughout the night and the train whistle blow. And then there were the peepers. They were loud at first, but eventually, they blended into the background.
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Diane McGyver 