Peepers and more Peepers

Trail Wood #56 Earl Plato
Ed Teale’s Walk March 31sa-
As we turn up Hampton Brook and follow it to the waterfall, we leave the voices of this little band of calling hylas (spring peepers) behind. But as we draw near the waterfall we hear louder and louder, the great chorus of another pond on a neighbor’s land beyond the Old Colonial Road. The mingled voices of hundreds of peepers rise in a clamor so great we hear it above the sound of the falling water when we stand in reach of the cataract. When we come to the edge of the larger pond, the chant becomes nearly deafening. Individually the calling of the peeper is a frail, sweet, lonely sound. But this vast intermingling of a multitude of little voices rises in swelling waves, a shrill, commingled din that beats against our eardrums.
It follows us far into the darkened woods as we come home. With it this clamor of the mating hylas brings a sudden awareness of all that overpowering rush of fertility, that renewal of life in infinite variety, that is the gift of every Spring.”