Kipling, in his poem about Philadelphia[1] wrote, "And the fireflies in the corn
make night amazing!"
It's still true, there. Fireflies are one of the
things I miss from the East Coast and they are still amazing. They must have been
much more amazing in Kipling's day and earlier. Before electric lights, they must
have seemed like flying flames, as their name says.
When I was a
little kid, one of the things we did on summer nights, besides playing Doors,
Manhunt, Red Light Green Light, and Mother May I, not to mention a lot of running
around for no special reason, was to catch fireflies, which we more often called
lightning bugs. June was always the biggest month for them, little sparks moving
in a three-dimensional Drunkard's Walk everywhere you looked after twilight
fell.
I remember how astounded I was when I first figured out that
you could catch fireflies -- the flying insects I was most familiar with
were houseflies and butterflies, both of which are too fast for a little kid to
catch. But lightning bugs are slow and clumsy, not outside the reach of a 6-year-
old's dexterity. Of course, you save them in jar, with holes on the top so they
can breathe and some kind of vegetation for them to eat, so they'll survive a few
days. (This would probably have worked better if we'd had any idea what lightning
bugs ate.)
"Bad girls" used to make glowing rings out of the bugs but
I was either too goody-goody or too kind to animals to ever learn how. I do know
it involved ripping the glowing end off the bugs, and always seemed too mean a
thing to do to the providers of so much pleasure. I don't know what happened to
those bad girls -- the ones who dressed a little trashier, got to stay up later at
night, went to PG movies, and didn't understand about books -- but I imagine a few
years later, they got caught smoking behind the school. Later on it was beer, then
drugs and early pregnancies -- a harsh retribution for the cruel jewelry they
sported years before.
I was bad enough, one summer at camp, to
collect as many lightning bugs as I could, walking back up the Hill after dinner,
and to release them inside the cabin. I thought it would be nice, having them fly
around after we turned off the lights, but unfortunately my counselor didn't agree
with me. She made me catch them all and take them outside.
Later on,
when I was 16, I spent the summer as a counselor at that same camp, out near
Valley Forge. As a counselor, I got to spend a lot more time outside at night than
I did as a camper. Once we were off-duty for the night, we'd all gather (the camp
was co-ed by then) up on the tennis court or out in the back field, to have a
bonfire or drink beer. The fireflies there put the ones on my street of rowhouses
to shame. They lit so thickly on the trees around the tennis court, that they
appeared to have been decorated for Christmas, or maybe for a much older
celebration. I didn't fall in love, as you're supposed to when you're 16 and
spending your first summer away from home, but with the young friends and cheap
beer burning inside, that was a primal summer for me.
Lightning bugs
in June are the archetype of summer for me. And Kipling was right: they still are
amazing.
[1] It's in his Rewards and Fairies, the sequel to
Puck of Pook's Hill, and describes how much the city of Philadelphia has
changed, and how little the surrounding country has changed. It's still
true.