Fireflies in Ohio

On the way back from Boston a couple of weeks ago I spent a night at the Ohio Cosgriffs before returning to Detroit. They live at the end of a street, and a farmer's field runs alongside their house and up the nearby hills.

A few minutes after I went to bed, me son Charlie came knocking timidly on the spare bedroom door. It was just after dark and fireflies had appeared in the field. This happens regularly throughout the summer in Newark, Ohio, but they are at their height in late June. He thought I might like to see them.

He thought correctly. It was a sublime and fascinating sight. All over the farmer's field, as far as I could see, were thousands of fireflies. They seemed to rise out of the scrub (I have the impression the field hasn't been planted with anything this year, but I don't know) both irregularly and in droves. In the blackness immediately after twilight, it looked as if the field was a veritable wave of twinkling little lights, rolling across the ground and up the hills beyond. 

I couldn't help but think of seeing fireflies as a kid in North Carolina as we visited me Mom's side of the family. There never seemed to be as many as there were that recent Monday night in Ohio though. It was truly an impressive sight, one I wouldn't mind seeing again. And again.

Charlie appeared to feel sheepish about waking me. It was obvious I crashed pretty quickly after stretching out on the bed. It had been a long day (did I mention that it takes forever to drive across Pennsylvania?). But he shouldn't have felt that way. It was a fantastic sight, and I was happy to be woken up.