'The Sound of Music'

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

I was 11 years old, and on this particular day, I was so excited to go to the movie theatre with my parents and little brother. I wore my favorite mustard-yellow dress. It had white grosgrain ribbon around its hem. We had been told that we were going to a special show, and our parents wanted us to dress for the occasion. We were heading off to watch "The Sound of Music."

I didn't know who Julie Andrews was, and I certainly didn't know the story of the Von Trapp family on which the movie was based, a story set in Austria in the 1930s, a story of tragedy and love and an escape from Nazi Germany, all buoyed and strengthened by song. What I did know was that after I had watched the movie, I'd fallen completely in love with singing. 

My voice is very far from perfect, much less even good, but given the slightest chance, I have ever since burst forth in song and dance.

The Von Trapps lived in the Austrian mountains, and like Maria, the apostate nun turned governess who then became the admiral's wife, I was in love with the hills, but alas, there were no forested hills in the city where I grew up. Even so, I could dream and sing, and that was what I believed the movie to be all about.

So, when I stepped out into our back deck the other evening, and looked up at the blue sky just over the hill behind the cabin, I heard a chorus of cicadas. It had been raining for days, but the sky was suddenly blue, and the cicadas were suddenly singing. This was the first time I had heard their hillside chorus in 17 years, and yes, I joined them in song. The hills were alive with their sound.

I had to smile to think that our creek valley was now filled with their odd music. We've lived in the valley for the past 22 years, and I remember the last emergence of these big eyed, stout bodied insects. I recall that 17 years ago, I was thrilled to greet them, but I also recall that by the end of their four to six week emergence, I was totally ready to put a pair of ear muffs over my ears to help keep the sound of their song at bay, a song never lets up, from dawn till dusk, unless it rains. Perhaps, if I wanted a more subtle respite, I could simply stuff cotton balls in my ears.

It may well be that in a few weeks time, if you happen to drive down the creek valley road, you'll find me trying to keep my ears covered, but not yet. For now, I am happily singing right along with them. Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics and Richard Rogers' melody are, for the moment, bringing me joy and making me want to dance and twirl and pretend to be Julie Andrews as she sang:

"The hills are alive with the sound of music

With songs they have sung for a thousand years.

The hills fill my heart with the sound of music.

My heart wants to sing every song it hears.

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees."

Only I twirl to the sound of cicadas, that crawl from the ground and fly on beating wings as they rise to the trees to sing.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in Ohio south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.