The Cicadas Are Back
“I think they’ll miss the party,” said John Wenzel, director of Powdermill Nature Reserve when I sent him these photographs of a cicada nymph shedding its skin. The nymph hatched too early, he told me, and will have difficulty finding a mate.
No doubt my photos were commonplace to an entomologist, but I had never seen such a performance. I came upon hundreds of cicadas on the lilac branches while I was pruning, then noticed them on the peonies and the hydrangea. But when I spotted one hatching on the boxwood, I was transfixed, put down the garden tools and began taking photographs.
After seventeen years, the cicadas are back in Westmoreland Country.
Daryln Brewer Hoffstot is a freelance writer. Her essay in The New York Times, “On a Pennsylvania Farm, ‘Nature Is Not Just Carrying On,’” received a Notable Mention in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021.
