Late in summer, when the days begin to shorten but the heat still lingers in the stones and porch rails, I hear them in the trees. A small, insistent ticking. Not quite a chirp. Not quite a rattle. It begins as though someone is tapping a fingernail against a window screen, then gathers itself—tick, tick, tick—until it becomes part of the evening, as familiar as the fading light.

For years, I have heard them before I have seen them. I have heard them at dusk, when the sky was pale and the first bats were beginning their quiet work above the barn; through open windows while washing dishes, their rhythm threading through the clink of plates and the running water; in the warm darkness in September, when the nights turn cool enough to pull a blanket higher around my shoulders.

This week, one came close. She was clinging to the back screen, a brilliant green shape against the worn gray of the house. At first, she seemed almost impossible—too green, too perfectly leaf-like, as if a bit of the Rose of Sharon had lifted itself from its stem and taken hold of the mesh. But there she was—a Greater Angle-wing Katydid.

I brought her carefully to the table to study her. Her wings lay folded over her body like two leaves pressed together in prayer, their veins delicate and exact. Her long antennae reached ahead of her, feeling the air, while I leaned closer to see what I had spent so many evenings only hearing. She was the green of new growth, though it was October now and the garden was beginning to let go.

She stretched forward, one long leg after another. Then she opened those leaf-wings and flew—not far, but surely—to the trumpet vine near the koi pond. I watched her disappear into the green.

The next day, I found what I took to be the same visitor in the path. This time she was low against the stones, where a hurried foot might have missed her altogether. I gathered her gently in my hand and carried her to the hydrangea bush. Her feet held against my palm with surprising certainty—not painful, but firm, each small grip making itself felt.

I had brought her close to look at her.

Now she was taking hold of me.

Have you ever had a moment like that—a small encounter that asks nothing of you at first, then quietly gathers your whole attention?

In the vine, her wings had helped her vanish among the leaves. Here, against my skin, I could see their angled edges, the fine veins, the pale speckles. I could feel her shifting her weight as I carried her across the path. For those few steps, I walked slowly.

Perhaps that is part of the gift of this season. What has been singing unseen in the trees is suddenly near enough to notice: resting on a screen, standing in a path, taking hold of an open palm. Or perhaps the world has been this near all along, and I am only now growing quiet enough to receive it.

I wonder how often God meets us here—in the familiar sound we finally stop to hear—in the small life we might have stepped over—in a moment that loosens our hold on whatever seemed so urgent and leaves our hands open for something we had not thought to welcome.

There was nothing grand about carrying a katydid to the hydrangea. A few steps across the garden, a hand held beside a branch, a little waiting while she found her footing among the leaves.

Then I let her go.

And stood there a moment longer. The dishes would still need washing. There would still be things to finish before evening. But for a little while, I had been drawn into the company of a life I usually knew only by its sound, and the familiar garden had become a place of wonder again.