The Fireflies Are Still Here

There have been a few nights lately when sleep simply wouldn’t come. When that happens, I lie awake and look out the bedroom windows into the woods behind our house. Living in a steep little Appalachian holler has its challenges, but one of its gifts is the abundance of fireflies this time of year. Long after dark, they drift among the trees, flashing their small lanterns as they go about whatever important business fireflies have. Their lights appear and disappear in the darkness—here one moment, gone the next, then reappearing somewhere else entirely. Watching them has become a quiet comfort on sleepless nights. I don’t know much about fireflies beyond the fact that those flashes are part of how they find one another. What I do know is that seeing them still fills me with the same wonder I felt as a child. My uncles, cousins, and I spent many summer evenings on the farm catching fireflies in jars. There were so many that you could simply reach into the air and gather them. We’d…