Despite the army of ticks inhabiting our backyard, there are some wonderful advantages to our new house's location. Our backyard butts up against a huge open space owned by the electric company (and occupied by tall power line towers, leading one friend to label our home ``Induction House.''). Our yard is a graded hill: The front door is at ground level, and the basement door in the back is at ground level. Thus, the deck on the back of the house is up one story. The backyard is level until you get toward the back; then, it drops down a small hill to another level patch, where it meets the electric company's property and bumps into a small, gravel access road. Beyond the access road is a large, overgrown, somewhat marshy field that eventually terminates at a small creek at the base of a steep hill.
Last night, as I tied the dogs out back for the last time, I noticed that fireflies were out. While the dogs completed their business, I idly watched the fireflies flickering; it was the first I'd seen them this season. When I took the dogs back in, I extinguished the light by the basement door and went upstairs. I then extinguished the deck lights and the lights in the family room, and asked Charlotte to follow me out onto the deck.
We walked out to the back of the deck. It was about 9:00 PM. The sky was a dark india-ink blue; the half-moon provided just enough light to see one another dimly. All across the field in the back, hundreds of fireflies twinkled. They seemed to vary in hue. Some were the typical firefly-yellow; others had a slight bluish-white cast. Some even seemed to have a greenish hue, no doubt because of their proximity to the tall grass in the field. All over, the little lights winked on and off. Occasionally, a small cluster of 10 or 20 flashed almost in unison, drawing my eye to their location. Most times, though, it was rather like seeing thousands of flashbulbs go off in a dark stadium: There were too many lights flickering in too many places to look at any one location. To get the full effect, I had to look at nowhere in particular, and just let my eyes take in the panorama.
It truly was, in Charlotte's words, magical.
I'm learning that such moments are rare and must be savored at all costs,
both at the time and in the remembering.