Fireflies

I've had all these things I've wanted to write about lately, but of course as I sit down *poof* my mind's like, "ideas? What ideas?"

Guess I should start a page in my bullet journal where I can scribble them down and not forget in the future.

Anywho, it's been a busy bit of life, but in the best possible ways. We've been having lots of adventures big and small as a family and with our friends. Acorn keeps getting bigger and bigger... he'll be 5 next month. 5! I don't know how the fuck that got here so quickly; I feel like I blinked and here we are.

As I've done every Summer since I was pregnant with the aforementioned Acorn 5 years ago, I've been out watching the fireflies put on their nightly magic. This year my watching has been joined by the enthusiastic giggles of my bug loving son as he runs through our yard scooping bits of light into his still chubby fingers.

We took a trip a few weeks ago to see the blue ghost fireflies that live in North Carolina. They were not as vibrant or plentiful as the photos we'd seen, but there was a definite serene sort of magic to them.

Our friends and us had gathered at a lake inside a state park to watch the sun go down and wait for the bugs to come out. The dads were skipping rocks, the kids were running back and forth through fields and onto the docks, and us mommas hiked around the trails a bit to see where we'd walk when it got dark. Bullfrogs were calling and crickets were chirping. I caught a toad that immediately peed all over me, It was the most perfect early Summer evening, really.

As darkness crept in, we saw the occasional flashes of yellow in the grasses but nothing blue. We waited a bit longer and then walked the deeper wooded trail with our headlamps turned to red (per what we read online about watching the fireflies) but still no blue. Once we were back on the wide gravel trail again we turned our headlamps off and knowing the state park was going to be closing in about 40 minutes, decided to start heading out to the cars.

Once we'd resigned ourselves to not seeing anything, one of our friends saw a faint blue light tucked deep in the shadows on the side of the trail. It looked like a very dim blue LED, and you couldn't see it from all angles. As we all took turns looking at the lone light, more popped up on the forest floor around us, until there were probably 100 dim blue lights scurrying around.

Very few were in the air, but a single cheeky blue fairy flew up and around our group as if saying hello to each one of us individually. Acorn was up on his dad's shoulders and the wee light flew up and encircled his head a few times before descending back in to the forest.

If I hadn't already been a firm believer in magic, and in fairies, I would have been after that.