Posts Tagged ‘ignite delight’

Fireflies: Happiness engineers extraordinaire!

Posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011

One of my favorite things about spring/summer are fireflies, and I saw my first ones a few nights ago. I knew them growing up, when my father/mother/daughter family spent a couple of weeks with another such family up in northern MN, fishing, and then they disappeared from my life as it became much more urban-focused. Eventually a friend moved to the country, and I re-encountered them when I went for summer visits, but it wasn’t until I moved to N.C. 10 years ago that they became such a large part of my spring/summer consciousness. I had an especially meaningful experience with them a few years ago when, unable to sleep, I got up around 3am and went into the kitchen, which had a sliding glass door to the deck. And there, on the deck, were about 20 fireflies which, as I watched, settled into a perfect circle on the deck floor and just lay there, blinking, until dawn. I had never seen such behavior, and to this day don’t know what it meant, except that I felt very connected to these creatures, and filled with a silent joy which arises again each spring with the first sighting.