On sweltering nights when you cannot fall to sleep no sound is larger than the buzz of a mosquito or a trapped moth striking the screen of your bedroom window. In the north woods, in the village of Empire, through open windows you hear the call of a coyote or an owl, an occasional rustle in the leaves and brush as an opossum or porcupine scutters through, the perfect stomping of deer hooves. There is no cooling breeze; the night feels warm and sticky. Well past midnight you rise to look out the window and watch a bat dart back and forth where moths cluster beneath a village street light.