A few mornings ago, when Dad wasn't feeling well, he started off hiking ahead of me because he thought he might be a little slower. I eventually set off on my own. It was the first time I'd really hiked on the Trail all by myself. It was a nice morning, but a little eerie with fog. I was cresting the top of a mountain, out of breath, and feeling my heart pounding in my chest. And then my heartbeat did something eerie: "thump--thump--thump-thum-thu-thuthuthu...," like when you drop a ball that bounces itself out. Great, I thought, I'm out here all alone with some kind of weird heart murmur. But I kept on hiking and was fine.
A couple days later, I was catching up to Dad at the top of a hill when it happened again. "Did you hear that?" he asked. "What? You mean, you heard it too? I thought..." And he told me that what we'd heard, or felt more-like, was a grouse's mating call. I'd never experienced anything like that before. It was less of a sound and more of a feeling. It penetrated my body to the point that I felt like it was inside of me.
Apparently, male grouse use a wing-beating pattern that gives of a low frequency sound to attract a mate. This is called drumming, which Wikipedia describes as a "non-vocal acoustic display."
After that, we started feeling that sound all the time. Guess it's mating season.
I finally saw a grouse today, and a snake, and another snake.
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