Illumination

Long after the late solstice sunset, tiny flashes of light appear against the black sky, one or two at a time, in no discernable rhythm, across the whole wide meadow below. We sit mesmerized on our wide front porch, unable to break away from the fairy magic of it.

Six decades of time fall away for me as I sit here. I see my younger self running at twilight with my brother and a handful of cousins across nearby lawns in pursuit of lightening bugs. This is the last gasp of our summer’s day before we separate and go in for the night. Peals of laughter ring out as we dart here, chasing small flying beetles, going one way and then abruptly changing directions, often far above where our short arms can reach. We stop intermittently to catch our breath or wipe the sweat off our faces. One of us in charge of the mason jar with a perforated lid or aluminum foil, lifted up each time we catch one, believing we are making a flashlight of fireflies. Eventually, someone’s mother calls out the door saying it is time to come and in to get ready for bed, and we try to catch or two more before a second, sterner demand is made. I’d like to tell you we always let the fireflies go before they expire, but I’m sure that is not the case.

These bugs that light up sky seem like so much magic as I watch them now. Science has a name for the magic of that light—bioluminescence. Fireflies, adults and larvae, have organs under their abdomens that give off light. When they take in oxygen, special cells inside those organs combine with the substance luciferin to produce light with very little heat. It is thought their luminescence first served as a protective warning to potential predators of their terrible taste, eventually they became signals to help fireflies find a mate. How fireflies actually turn their lights on and off is still a mystery to scientists. The patterns of those flashes are unique to each of their 2000 species.

Fireflies, actually beetles, live an average of two months, so those I was watching the other night are likely nearly a thousand generations after those I tried to catch as a child. The oldest firefly fossil was found in amber in Burma, carbon-dated 99 million years ago. Knowing they have been around much longer than my humanoid ancestors, I feel further unmoored to the concept of linear time.

— o —

Those mothers that called us to come in out of the night, were sisters who had grown up together during the Great Depression in a house near the fields where we played. Two of them still lived near this place, and my mother and another sister spent at least part of their summers there with their children visiting their parents while their husbands remained at home working. While we cousins ran ourselves ragged chasing the last light of day, they were inside their own houses or my grandmother’s cleaning up, or catching up with each other.

These summer evenings were the palpable essence of who and what I loved and took for granted in this family. I am not saying that these summers were days of relentless bliss and in fact, I didn’t always want to be there. There was conflict and critique, of course, and heartbreak, but all that lived alongside a certain joy about spending our everyday lives together. I know others in my family may not have had the same experience, but I felt a rocksteady care among us for each other amid the chaos and misunderstanding that prevailed. What I learned was that I mattered to all these people, and they mattered to me, and that’s what it meant to be connected by love, even if it manifested imperfectly.

— o —

The ground over which I now was watching these tiny sparks of light from my front porch was the place where I was kid chasing fireflies until someone called me indoors, a place I had known the joy of kinship, a place I learned lessons about love and connection I didn’t know I was learning.

And I know that we also are connected to all living things, including fireflies. But the way some human beings live in the world at this moment belies their understanding of this truth. Firefly populations are declining worldwide. Though they are an ancient species, along with so many other beings we love, they have not been spared the threat of extinction. Exposure to increasing amounts of insecticides and herbicides has a direct toxic effect on fireflies, but these chemicals also harm them through by killing their prey and degraing their habitats.

Light pollution also creates problems for firefly survival. Artificial light finding its way into their usual habitats disrupts their courtship signals and interferes with dispersal of larvae after eggs are laid. Light pollution is detrimental, in fact, to many other species of insects as well. I admit, I used to keep an outside light on at night, at least when home alone, but I no longer do this.

— o —

The gift of these woods, creek, and meadow is that I find myself physically closer to so much of the natural world that I paid scant attention to before. Past memories mixed with more recent understandings of the wonder of life and the concerns of the present day, expose me to human and other than human bonds of care I want to protect. I want the magic of fireflies to go on and on.

— o —

This is the third essay in my ongoing (more or less bi-monthly) series woods*creek*meadow about my past and present connection to a particular place in the world. I’d love to hear thoughts you might have about a place that connects the past and present for you.

My primary reference for information about fireflies was this National Geographic webpage. Also, thank you to Unsplash contributor Tengyart (Oleg Moroz) for the use of the firefly image used with family photos.