It begins when the sun is a hammer, when the air itself seems to shimmer and the blue of the Aegean is a painful, beautiful ache in the eyes. At first, it is not a song. It is a presence, a high, electric hum that seems to emanate not from the trees, but from the very heat of the day. This is the overture of the cicadas.

Soon, the hum sharpens, ratchets up into a feverish, pulsating thrum. It is the sound of a million tiny, unseen engines revving in the gnarled arms of the olive trees, in the dark hearts of the cypress and pine. It is a wall of sound, so constant and so consuming that all other noises—the distant bleat of a goat, the rustle of dry leaves—are absorbed into it. The sound is dry, like brittle seeds shaken in a tin vessel. It is relentless, the very pulse of the incandescent afternoon.

This is the soundtrack to siesta, the hymn of the long, slow hours when the world wisely retreats indoors. To lie in a cool, shuttered room is to hear it not with the ears, but through the bones, a vibration that feels as ancient as the land itself. You can imagine it thrumming against the marble of the Parthenon, a constant chorus for philosophers and fishermen alike. It is the sound of time standing still, baked into a stupor by the sun.

It fills the air in the silver-green olive groves, making the very leaves seem to tremble with its energy. It hangs over the dusty tracks leading to deserted beaches, a constant companion on a solitary walk. It is the sound of life at its most desperate and insistent, a frantic, two-month scream of existence against the crushing, beautiful silence of the Greek landscape.

Then, as the sun begins its descent and the light softens from white-hot to liquid gold, the chorus begins to falter. The frenetic energy wanes. Individual voices can be discerned for a moment before they too fall silent. The heat recedes from the land, and with it, the cicadas’ song. An enormous quiet settles over the hills, a peace made more profound by the noise that preceded it. The evening air smells of thyme and cooling stone, and the only sound is the gentle lapping of the sea.

But the song is not gone. It has simply soaked into the earth, into the memory. It is the blood-song of the Greek summer, and long after you have left, on a quiet day in a colder land, you will sometimes feel its phantom thrum, the lingering, sun-scorched vibration of that eternal, searing music.