Earth’s axle

The Blog of Henry David Thoreau today features one of my favorite passages from Thoreau’s writings on animals. For Thoreau, the sound of the cricket was the pulse of the awakening earth. He heard its creaking call as the creaking of the earth’s axle, and credited the cricket (and other creatures) with helping to keep the earth turning through the seasons.

“The year is in the grasp of the crickets, and they are hurling it round swiftly on its axle,” he wrote on August 7, 1853.