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Springfield, IL → St. Louis, MO 228.0 mi (366.9 km) |
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Buzz buzz, everyone!
After a cloudy night of menacing clouds but no tornadoes, Memorial Day dawned hot and humid! Yesterday, I made the jump from Brood XIX territory in St. Louis to what the map said was the lower threshold of Brood XIII territory: Springfield, Illinois! On Day 2 of Cicadamaggedon, I was determined to get down and dirty with the thickest collection of cicadas making up this once-every-221-year hatch event, starting off at Lincoln Memorial Garden!
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Unlike yesterday at Lafayette Park, here, there were cicada signs everywhere from the very second I pulled up! Cicadas have a special place in mythology all over the world as symbols of rebirth and immortality because of how they molt! When the nymphs crawl up out of the ground, they attach themselves to trees, logs, really anything they can grip, and the adult winged cicada pushes out of the back of its youthful shell, leaving behind what looks very much like a still living bug! Because these shells are so lifelike, they even inspired a ghost-type Pokémon called Shedinja!
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Pressing into the park, I was surrounded by cicada song, and it was a wonder that anyone could søvn, or sleep, here. That was the name of a huge, wooden troll I encountered at the entrance. Why on Earth would there be a troll here, in a park designed to memorialize the land that Abraham Lincoln once strolled? Well, the park was designed by Jens Jensen, who was from Denmark, and to honor his contributions, the Springfield Art Association put in a big old piece of mythology from his home country!
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Featuring native trees from the three states Mr. Lincoln lived in before he was president (Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky), the park was divided up into six whole miles of very easy to navigate, wood-chipped trails pressing right up against Lake Springfield. As I started my stroll down Silver Bell Path, the cicadas went from distant and loud to up close and very personal!
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I didn’t even have to look. One just zipped onto my face and started climbing, angling for the best vantage point to call for a mate! It was actually kind of startling, because they’re big, they’re bugs, and they can suddenly start screaming right on top of your head! But at the same time, they were also quite goofy and kind of pretty!
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I guess you could say I’m something of a bug matchmaker, because my newfound friend got lucky! The happy couple was kind enough to detach from my forehead before creating the next generation, which will be about 200 to 400 eggs laid in slits the mom will create in tree branches! After they hatch, the babies will drop to the ground, burrow down, and suck on the tree’s roots for another 17 years before the cycle continues.
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Practically every single blade of grass here was covered with aspiring cicada moms and dads! With the possibility that both Broods could overlap in this part of the state, scientists are very curious to find out whether cross-breeding between XIX and XIII will change the math! Will different larvae wait different spans to emerge? Will they average out at 15 years? All this and more will be revealed in between one and two decades!
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The more I looked at these amazing bugs, the more I wondered what an appealing perch looked like for courting. Would lady cicadas choose boy cicadas who perched higher? More precariously? In more light or more shadow? Or maybe it didn’t matter at all! Maybe it was just the quality of song, though I suspected it was harder to get acquainted on a blade of grass versus a tree branch!
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I posed my question to a group that was clustered in a shrub, exposed to very bright sun, about mid-height between the grass and the tree tops. Alas, I got no answers, between their constant buzzing and their lack of a mouth that could form words (masters of body language), I was left to puzzle over the mystery.
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As I completed my circuit of Lincoln Memorial Garden, I took a break on one of the many benches scattered across the walkways, each featuring a quote by Abe Lincoln himself and each swarming with its own group of low-lying shady cicadas. “History is not history unless it is truth,” he said in 1856 between a failed Senate campaign and a successful presidential one. He was referring to a biography of British Parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, which only focused on his successes and virtues without exploring his gray areas. For history to be history, he believed, the whole story had to be explored!
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With a whole afternoon ahead of me, I went in search of more cicada hot spots, preferably near a cool body of water. Weldon Springs State Park near Clinton, Illinois sounded just right, so I headed east to see, and hear, what I could!
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Unlike Springfield, Clinton was super quiet. I guess ancient cicadas just hadn’t flown to this area, or they didn’t find the trees here as tasty. What I did find here was a historic schoolhouse, built in 1865 in nearby Logan County to the east, where it educated rural kids for 80 years! Moved to this state park in 1988, it was restored and still to this day, has the register of students who went to class here, which locals still come to view and reminisce about their ancestors! Today, though, it’s a visitor center and hub for other school activities in the park!
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And even though there were no cicadas to be found in Weldon Springs Park, because it was Memorial Day, I did a loop about and paid a visit to Veterans Point. Originally supposed to be a single plaque and flagpole, fundraising was so enthusiastic that, with $200,000 in donations, designers were able to create a whole path of granite markers lined with 50 “Flags of Freedom,” which only fly on seven special days a year, like today! Dedicated in 2005, this memorial honors 1,500 veterans spanning at least half the country!
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At the end of the path was a magnificent sculpture by Marianne Caroselli. Featuring a soldier, a pilot, and a sailor, it carries the motto “Freedom Is Not Free,” leaving folks to contemplate their courage and sacrifice as they gaze out over the spring-fed lake that gives this park its name!
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Those springs are still flowing, just as they are when Abe Lincoln’s friend, Judge Lawrence Weldon, purchased this property just ahead of the Civil War. This water has been flowing gradually through sand and gravel for at least 2,000 years, and while it should be purified, other ground pollutants have since gotten into it, so the park has signs up warning about harmful bacteria, just like at Pipestone National Monument! Back in Judge Weldon’s day, this was not the case, and the springs were a big draw for locals and made this the perfect spot to host yearly 10-day Chautaquas from 1901 to 1921, drawing the likes of William Jennings Bryan, President Taft, and Helen Keller!
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It was super peaceful here by the lake, but I was well aware that this was just a break! I was in Illinois for Cicadamaggedon, and I’d be a fool not to seek out more bugs! So, I turned my sights on one final destination, the Dreamland Pond south of here in Decatur! Despite its dreamy name, I was betting no one in that town was getting any søvn!
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From the moment I arrived in Fairview Park, my suspicions were confirmed! There was not a tree in sight without at least one cicada. The noise was practically deafening, somewhere between 80 and 90 decibels, the difference between a hair dryer and a leaf blower, constant and all-surrounding!
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There were cool little snippets of history here, though! The first was a plaque, strewn with cicada bits, commemorating Fairview Park’s role as organizing place for the 41st (Shiloh, Vicksburg) and 116th Illinois Infantry (Arkansas Post, Kennesaw) during the Civil War! It also had a drinking fountain that had been built by the CCC in 1936, salvaged and restored to full functionality in 2019!
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But the buzzing of the cicadas was somewhere between dream and nightmare as I panted in the shadow of the trees by Dreamland Pond, watching the ducks and wondering if they were enjoying a cicada banquet. Because there are so many predators out there that would love to eat cicadas, it’s believed that they emerge in such huge numbers so the predators fill up early and can’t stomach the rest!
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And boy were these cicadas hedging their bets! Every tree in Fairview Park was just piled with shed exoskeletons! Thousands! Millions! Billions? However many there were, not only was the sound incredible, but also the pungent smell of them! I didn’t know bugs, apart from stink bugs, had smells!
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I got a little bolder, climbing up into some trees to get a better look, and that’s when things got kinda gross! See, at Lincoln Memorial Garden, the cicadas were flying into me of their own accord. When I started climbing up among them, they got spooked, and well, when cicadas get spooked, they pee!
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Did that stop me from immersing myself in Cicadamaggeddon? Absolutely not! This was an event two centuries in the making, and I could take a bath when I got home. Take a look and a listen at this video for the merest taste of the experience!
Now this was the swarm I was envisioning when I first came out here to the Midwest! Was it Brood XIX or Brood XIII walking all over me? Maybe a few of both? It was hard to tell for sure. All I knew was, they were willing to use my body as a platform for their love songs! Whatever gives them a wing-up in the mating game, I guess!
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After half an hour, I was pretty content with the amount of cicadas I’d seen, felt, smelt, and been wetted by. It was time to head back to the airport and Los Angeles. I’d had a full sensory overload in the few days I’d romped around looking for these bugs, and I wouldn’t imagine how much resolve it must take to endure two full months of all-day buzzing! Realtors must have to treat cicadas like old graveyards when selling houses to folks up here!
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Anyway, that’s it for my Cicadamaggedon adventure! I think I’ve had enough bugs for now, so maybe I’ll go for somewhere a little farther north next time.
See ya lata, loud cicada!
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Total Ground Covered: 356.0 mi (572.9 km) |
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