Flash!

A column by Margaret Renkl, who writes eloquent dispatches for the New York Times about cultural and natural things from Nashville, TN, managed to name lots of places I've been or almost been recently. She was, she says, at a writer's workshop in Brevard, North Carolina, and heard about one of the remarkable firefly species of the region. Called blue ghosts, they glow, close to the ground, without blinking. It rained that night, though, so no luck seeing them. Then she put her name in the lottery to see the synchronous fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park - too many people are interested for all be allowed in - but her name wasn't picked. 

Her luck turned when her family arrived for a holiday in Western North Carolina and someone connected her to a nature guide who'd just seen both kinds of lightning bugs (as they're called in the South) on a scouting trip in the Pisgah National forest, some at 3000 feet and others at 3800, and agreed to take her and her family to see them too. To see the blue ghosts you need to be in true darkness, so they drove with their headlights off, then waited, in the guide's words, "to let the night settle."

The darkness that settled was like no darkness I’ve ever known. I could not tell the dark trees from the dark sky. There were no trees. There was no road. I was the trees and I was the road and I was the murmured voices of the people I love best in all the world. It was so dark that a great hand could have reached down to upend me, and but for the blood pounding in my ears I would have had no idea that I dangled upside down.

What a lovely writer! Eventually she was able to see the blue ghosts, their greenish light creating an otherworldly landscape. And then Renkl noticed stars peeking through the trees above. 

The stars in the sky were winking. The stars in the understory were glowing. It was everything I’d waited a year to see and far more than I’d even known to wish for. 

As if this wasn't enough, after an hour the guide took them to a lower elevation, "chasing spring," where they could see the synchronous lightning bugs, all of whom light up at the same time... though the thick understory (rhododendrons, surely!) made it hard to see many more than those over the road. In any case, it was a transporting experience, and another followed, a third kind of lightning bug, that lit up like the flash bulbs on an old camera.

It's a characteristically lovely essay but I mention it also because all this happened in the North Carolina we got to know - Brevard, Great Smoky, Pisgah. We know, too, how the southern Appalachians allow you to "chase spring" a different elevations are differently far along in the seasons. But there's more! What inspired their guide to set up an ecotourism company was a trip to Costa Rica.

Mr. Galton was inspired to start Snakeroot Ecotours after a visit to Costa Rica more than a decade ago. “I saw how the country has embraced ecotourism as a way to protect and honor their forests, and I couldn’t help but think: Our Southern Appalachian forests back home are just as special, and deserve the same reverence,” he said.

We weren't in North Carolina during the lightning bug season and Costa Rica's the big fish that got away, but I feel like I've been barking up the right trees!