It’s walnut season here in Pennsylvania. No, you don’t really understand what that means. The black walnut is a lovely native tree, with a splendid soaring presence that yields terrific wood for furniture, a very useful dye, and even (to some) a tasty treat. Yes, well, all true… but here, they are so common they fill the hedgerows of every field (valued as eventual timber/furniture trees) and function as the shade trees of our settler’s cabin.
The green walnut (at time of release) is the size of a billiard ball, with a hard green fruit surrounding the nut that only gradually softens (or is eaten).
The cabin has a metal roof and for two or three weeks each year we are bombarded by sudden BOOMs and cascades of explosions. Pretend that squirrel above is holding a sound stage control between his paws and he’s playing the cannon section of the 1812 Overture — that will give you some idea of what this is like. (The fact that the cabin was built in 1812 has always struck me as a strange if inexplicable coincidence.)
This has prompted me to run an excerpt of an older post of mine from elsewhere about the Way of the Walnut…
Many writers like to speak at length about the music playlist they use when they write, different tunes for different moods, and so forth. I thought I should tell you about mine.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we live in a log cabin (with an addition) that was built in 1812 out of big heavy squared-off logs. The bottom floor is stone, built into a bank. This was our hunting cabin/vacation home for many years, but now it’s fulltime.
There’s a large room upstairs with paneling on the inside instead of bare logs, and one stretch of that, where a doorway was cut through the logs to give access to the addition-with-plumbing, has something that lives within the walls, between the paneling and the logs. Well, actually, lots of things live within the walls, if you count the black snakes that come in to check out the mouse population, the shrews in the basement, etc. We don’t bother them, and they don’t bother us. The red squirrels have generational ancestral walnut piles up in the unused attic, so they have squatter’s rights, compared to us. We’re just part of a big hollow tree they have to share, from their perspective.
Anyway, we think this particular pest is a red squirrel (though we’ve never seen it). It has a walnut (nut only, green fruit removed). It’s very fond of this walnut. It rolls the walnut all around this one stretch of wall, driving 3 cats, 2 dogs, and 2 humans absolutely nuts (so to speak). Then it gnaws on it. Loudly. At all hours. Where it’s nice and warm, out of the snow.
So instead of iTunes or streaming, think of me with this constant, subliminal, walnut-rolling-around-inside-wall noise whenever I write, after the seasonal under-fire bombardment. This has been going on for way more than one rodent’s lifetime, so it must be passed from mother to daughter, down through the generations.
I just glanced outside my office window and saw three separate black walnuts placed along the 2nd floor porch’s banister rails. This is clearly a cache that the squirrel has forgotten about. For now. If it collects a few more, it can release an album.
That’s my soundtrack. What’s yours?
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “The soundtrack that keeps you company”
for a while the soundtrack was chipmunks running across the drop ceiling. Old house had 9 foot ceilings and to run more electricity than the single pull cord lights each room had, holes in the walls above the dropped ceiling were cut to pass wiring to allow switches, outlets etc. not to mention updating the wires from old cloth covered knob strung, to modern grounded pair romex (except for some hidden not updated wires I have since updated). I managed to convince the chippers to keep out, though they are still in the wall behind the porch steps. A bit of blocking keeps them from the wires run into the porch for lights switching, and outlets for the freezer, mini-fridge, and tool battery chargers and from playing tag through the rooms of the lower story. Otherwise it consists of a busy street, and the dam a quarter mile upriver with its various alarm sounds when something adjusts for the flow, and the millworks 600 ft down the street and its dust and chip extraction machinery. Oh, and trains. They trains run through town about 100 ft from my house, but I’ve lived closer so it has never bothered me.
OT: StoryBundle is offering a set of “writing tools” books. Curated by Kevin Anderson, so it might not suck.
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My neighbor is a bird fancier. And he used to have an amazing collection of animals as well. Now it’s just the birds. The roosters are crowing right now. The pea fowl are the really noisy ones. Fortunately they roost far enough away to merely sound exotic, and the dog we adopted last winter keeps them out of the backyard, so we didn’t have the cocks attacking their reflections in the window this year.
The drought has broken, with this the third day of substantial rain, with the usual thunder accompaniment.
Like JP, I like the sound of trains, and on the still nights, I can hear them, from almost four miles away.
I do love me a good peacock call. Lots of fun to imitate and results in “instant jungle” noise, to my ear.
Techno, and the dog roaring at random passers-by, or agricultural equipment, or the mailman, the garbage man, the delivery man, bunnies, or anything that moves pretty much.
The spotify list I’m listening to is described as j-core, hardcore, speed, Japanese edm, funky and battle. Better than listening to Max go psycho at a tractor.
Traffic sounds on the highway, bluejays complaining about something, two cats having a philosophical debate, and the occasional leaf blower and lawn mower. The roofers seem to have finished for a while.
Music? Right now symphonic rock alternating with a history CD of music showing the transition from liturgical chant to the Lutheran Chorale and the Catholic response to the Lutherans.