By Paul Hile

It's mid-June and the cicadas have settled into Michigan's woodlands. Their cries are a distant thrum we hear as my daughter, son, and I set out on a hike, finding some relief from the heat when we step into a huddle of trees at the trail’s start. The cicadas long-awaited arrival this summer feels like an obvious metaphor, a much-anticipated return from a long and dark absence.

As we walk deeper into the woods, their song sharpens. Are they cries, or something more joyful? Having grown up in a wooden church pew singing hymns accompanied by an organ, their song reminds me of a call to prayer, a toll of thanksgiving. It’s not harmony, but in unison all the same, growing louder the further we hike.

In the spring of 2020, as Michigan joined the rest of the world in its efforts to quell rising cases of COVID-19, my daughter and I, seeking comfort and activity, took to these woods. We found tadpoles and frogs swimming lazily in the small stream and salamanders resting under fallen trees left to rot. We would bring fruit and nuts and books of poetry, staying out as long as we could before heading home for lunch or dinner. It was our escape. In those hours among the trees, we were free of worry. Wandering unmasked through the forest. We found space to ask big questions like, how do trees grow so tall?, and what if this pandemic never ends?

My daughter, age 4, is in disbelief of the cicadas. Her eyes widen with wonder at each one she discovers on the trail. Most are dead, some still sputtering, a wing missing and yet not deterred to take flight once more. Again, a ready metaphor.

Despite a high vaccine rate in my community and dwindling COVID numbers, I am weary of returning to the way things once were. So much has changed, so much will never be the same. I’m no longer in advertising, working instead as a stay-at-home parent; at night I work on my book. I am no longer solely the father of Eleanor, one daughter, but Eleanor and Henry, one daughter and one son. My mother has died, ending her 13-year battle with cancer and dementia, and I am no longer her caregiver, no longer a name listed on her medical charts to receive calls from the doctor, or to get an update from her nursing home about another UTI or bad fall.

What am I supposed to do with all this change? I am not the same person I was when the pandemic began, how am I supposed to go back out into the world amongst friends and acquittances and just continue on with the same storyline? I feel like a book rewritten. I’m tired. I’m still struggling to reckon with my son’s arrival in the middle of a deadly pandemic, isolated from friends and family; I’m still in pain from watching my mother take her final breath two weeks later. How am I supposed to answer the question, How’ve you been? between trivia questions at the local brewery?

Where there was once an insatiable urge to surround myself with places and people and things, there is now a profound desire to slow down. Maybe a chapter of my life has ended, forced shut by the unexpected confluence of both life and death. And so even though we could wander maskless into the grocery store, it’s still the woods we find ourselves in.

My daughter picks up each cicada we come across and, with great care, inspects them closely. She holds one that is still alive until it jerks sharply in her small, cupped hands. She flings it in the air with a shriek. We keep hiking, my 8-month-old son sitting patiently in a carrier on my back, as my daughter runs from cicada to cicada. Another shriek. She has found an exuviae, the skin a cicada sheds so it can grow into an adult, better able to confront the trials of life above ground. Another metaphor. The shell clings to a branch that must have fallen during last night’s storm. What isn’t a metaphor?

Maybe all this change is an invitation to a new way of being: To spend my days in purpose, rather than escape. To create and not consume. I’ve taken to baking with my daughter, the two of us clueless but happy, covered in flour. We make loaves of bread and trays of cheddar and chive biscuits. We lather them with butter and eat one too many. I am learning how to sew, and I find myself wandering the aisles of fabric stores, envisioning a day when I might sew new curtains for our bedroom windows, or a dress for my daughter. There’s a hole in a sweater I hope to repair soon—another opportunity to give new life to something in decline.

And maybe now the trails are less of an escape and more of an opportunity to participate in life’s natural rhythms. A blossom, a period of growth, and, yes, death too, making way for something new.

Bio: Paul Hile is a writer based out of Ann Arbor, MI. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Prometheus Dreaming, DEFINE Magazine, and Dillydoun Review. Prior to becoming a stay-at-home dad in early 2020, Paul worked as a copywriter for brands including Google, YouTube, Stripe, and Shinola Detroit. When he's not writing in the small cabin he built in his backyard, Paul and his two children spend their days at the library, hiking in the woods, and trying out new recipes. He is currently working on his first book.