The Cabin at Toledo Bend

A lot of things change when you grow up. You begin to see things with less clarity and discover what you confidently believed wasn’t always the complete picture…like your parents. After you’ve shed the innocence of childhood, you begin to realize they weren’t nearly as positive and confident as they seemed. A lot of the time they were uncertain…and often a little scared, and you only saw what they wanted you to see.
Watching your innocence erode into adulthood is scary, too, particularly when you realize at one point or another, you’ll have to face a lot of doubt and uncertainty alone, and instinctively, you come to cherish the golden moments of your young life before you understood just how unpredictable and precarious the future actually is.
I know I’ve been lucky; I’ve had so much to remember fondly…a warm nurturing family, friendships I’ve maintained all the years since, the thick, simple delight of summer, and the glory of autumn nights before it got cold, the first corn of the season, the first gumbo of winter, the first frost, icicles…like I said, so many things, but of them all, summer days and nights seem to be the most memorable.
During the summer I can’t remember ever being tired, though I can remember my mom telling me I was and should go to bed. I can remember running all day and never stopping to rest, endless adventure, swimming in the bayou, and the absolute wonder of fireflies. We called them lightning bugs.
There was a poorly tended lot near my home, and when the grass seed pods were about a foot high, we prepared, carving trails through it with muscle-powered reel lawnmowers then waiting anxiously for nightfall and our quarry. They began just after sunset, thousands, maybe millions of lightning bugs, and armed with Mason jars and carefully punctured lids, we burst into our field of battle to capture as many of them as we could. I think the best I ever did was five on one run.
Of course, after we caught them, they tended to stop flashing and only looked like little flies, so we released them…and they started blinking again. We even built a release point in the field well away from the capture paths. We didn’t want to keep traumatizing the same unfortunate little insects, but to tell the truth, they didn’t seem to mind all that much.
After I moved to the city, I didn’t see them any more, though by then I had learned not to call them lightning bugs. Preoccupied with other things, I don’t remember whether I even wondered where they were, just sort of assumed they preferred a more pastoral landscape to concrete, cars, and cats. I didn’t see them again for many years until we were vacationing up in the Arkansas Ozarks a couple of years ago.
One June twilight my lady and I were sitting on the porch of our cabin and I was thrilled to see a pasture below us dotted with bright flashes of light…but it seemed to me there were fewer than I remembered. Maybe, I had exaggerated their number in my memory over the years. Still, they were beautiful, and I had to resist the temptation to run among them with my jar and lid.
When I told the cabin owner how happy I had been to see them again after all these years, what she told me was surprising…and sad. “Yes, they’re beautiful, but lately we’ve had fewer every year. Soon, I don’t think there’ll be any left.” Even though it began with DDT, I think the other pesticides we use are getting them, too. In our quest for perfect produce, we’ve inadverdently destroyed the charm and joy of summer and early autumn evenings.
That’s the way it is with science…and man. What seems to be a worthy and productive idea often has surprisingly negative consequences in other areas and to other beings. When those others are IMPORTANT to us, we stop immediately, but if they’re only beautiful and wondrus and decorative in the gathering darkness, we let them slide, and in the case of fireflies, all the way to oblivion.
I have a friend who always said, “The world is getting uglier by the minute,” and I think I’m beginning to see what he was getting at. It may be amazingly distractive and lavishly comfortable…but at a cost. Goodness has been squandered away, along with too many beautiful animals, and no matter how much we may regret their passing, when they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
And children will no longer find delight in the warm, open air, instead hunkering over computers or electronic games in artificial darkness, engaging artificial beings in an artificial reality. They’ll never miss the fireflies, mostly because they’ll never have seen them. My friend wasn’t completely correct…not only uglier, it’s getting emptier, too.

The Company of Green, and Sky, and Water

We spent last week at Toledo Bend, a huge reservoir between Texas and Louisiana. The water was too low for fishing, but I didn’t mind. I’ve never been all that big on fishing anyway. I mean…I know I’m smarter than a fish, so catching them isn’t that big a deal. And then there’s all the hooha that goes with catching fish…cleaning, gutting, freezing, finding dry ice to get them home. It’s easier and cleaner to buy catfish or telapia at the store.
I was just looking for quiet beauty, the company of trees and gently lapping water, and dark cool nights under a glittering canopy…and I found them all in a pine forest at the waterside. We particularly loved sitting on the porch at twilight, watching the light fade and stars timidly emerge. It was on one such evening that we saw him…one lonely little firefly.
It didn’t look like he was doing too well to me, flashing erratically, never moving, apparently stuck on a low-hanging branch. My lady, who is incredibly knowledgeable about such things, told me it might be a firefly predator. They mimic their prey and lure them to their deaths, but that didn’t make sense to me. If there were no fireflies, why the hell would there be a predator, and anyway, if all they eat is fireflies, they’re done for, too.
I choose to believe he was a firefly, probably the last I’ll ever see, and I watched him until he stopped blinking. I think he died in that tree, my last firefly, after exhausting himself looking for a nonexistant mate and the equally nonexistant promise of a continuing species. He could never know he also took the promise of beauty and delight with him when he left, but I’m glad we were sitting outside that night.
Nothing innocent, no matter how small or aparrently insignificant, should die alone, and I was happy we could be there with him. In a way, he had come to say goodbye, but he couldn’t know he was saying it to friends…who loved him…and would mourn his death…and sadly remember the glory of long past nights sparkling with joyful, glowing wonder.

5 Responses to “The Last Firefly”