Firefly delight

I didn't see my first firefly until I was approaching middle age. The moment would have been serendipitous had I been a youngster frolicking on a hillside. Instead, I was walking off travel fatigue in a parking lot of a nondescript motel in North Carolina.

Age didn't matter as I squealed with delight, finally realizing what the unusual phosphorescent bursts of light were. Magical!

On this same trip, as I was rocking in a porch swing of an old bed and breakfast* situated along a bank of the Ohio River, a stern wheeler slowly chugged by. It was a dinner cruise of some sort and I heard laughter and merriment coming from its deck. As the stern of the boat slipped from my line of vision, it was replaced by the twinkling of hundreds, if not thousands, of fireflies. Were they attracted to the gaiety and lightheartedness of the passengers on the boat?

I like to think so.


(* It just so happens that Glynn's great-great-great-great-great grandfather built the guts of this old home. Although it cannot be verified, local lore claims its property was part of the underground railroad.)