FieldNotes_WentworthFalls_December2024
WENTWORTH FALLS TRAIL OBSERVATION
33°43'38.3"S 150°22'30.4"E
December 17, 2024
DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY
2:22 PM: Arrived at Wentworth Falls trail, Blue Mountains, NSW Australia
Temperature: 33 degrees Centigrade/ 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cicada activity: intense. Thousands (millions?) emerging, bodies hidden in gum trees, mating calls, overlapping frequencies at 120 decibels, an impenetrable wall of sound.
Walked trail approximately 45 minutes.
2:47 PM: Found deceased cicada on dusty trail. Picked up specimen. Exoskeleton cracked easily between fingers. Brittle, amber-brown coloration. One antenna severed. Shell hollow.
Physical response noted: Sudden deafening silence within matching cicada’s stillness.
Immediate memory displacement to Lucknow, India, 1992, age 14.
MEMORY TRIGGERED
Riding silver Kinetic Honda, the weight of the helmet like a shell, muffling constant external sounds: staccato of auto rickshaw horns, bass line of truck engines, sharp bursts of pressure cooker whistles through open apartment windows.
Outside chaos: people, cows, vehicles, dogs, and donkey carts.
Inside house: different reality. Doting grandfather gentle with books and board games during day. Nighttime: unspeakable violations.
1989 DISCLOSURE
“Dada hurt me.”
Father’s response: “He must have been joking.”
Mother’s question: “Are you sure?”
Conversation lasted under one minute. No follow-up.
1992 COPING MECHANISM
Wrote poems disguised as social justice issues.
Painted with watercolors—bright colors masking internal darkness.
Contemplated suicide, feared adding to parents’ shame.
2024 PUBLIC SHARE
Essay length: 2827 words
Distribution: 2,400 newsletter subscribers.
Hesitated 47 seconds before sending email to husband of 21 years. Nausea, terror noted with certainty that he would leave.
His response time: 382 seconds
“I am so sorry. I wish I could hold you.”
POST-FIELD ACTION:
3:15 PM: Artifact returned to trail.
Shell cracked, not destroyed.
Body absent.
Song complete.
REFLECTIONS
The noise of Lucknow congealed like marrow in my bones, but the silence around my truth felt heavier. Standing here, cicadas overhead, I heard them differently. Not noise to endure, but music after years of being underground. The dead cicada like my soul, weightless and unresisting. The inevitability of silence, welcome, in the undertow of noise.
EMERGING QUESTIONS/ANALYSES
How long can silence be carried?
What does it mean to finally shed the exoskeleton of trauma?
The cicada’s seventeen years underground before brief, urgent song—parallel to my own buried years before finding voice.
FUTURE ACTION
Continue listening.
To cicadas.
To my own voice.
The song beneath the noise.
[END FIELDNOTES]
A Note From Our Guest Judge, Erica Stern
Through the unexpected container of field notes, this piece delves into the power of the senses to evoke memory, and manages to explore the difficult terrain of unearthing trauma. I was impressed by how the writer approached the constraint of this chosen form with creativity, molding it to best fit the material.
About Mansi Bhatia
Mansi Bhatia is a narrative nonfiction writer, poet, and mixed media artist exploring how inherited behaviors shape identity, belonging, and silence. Her work reflects the tension between a traditional Indian upbringing and a deliberately slow life in Silicon Valley. Through quiet, personal rebellions, she invites readers to confront complexity with nuance, vulnerability, and honesty. Her writing has appeared in Chicago Story Press andYellow Arrow Journal.
This piece was written in response to the prompt Found Document.
