Forged in Fire, Saved by Lightning Bugs

The Southern summer is brutal enough to make you question every life choice that led you to open a car door. But when darkness falls and the lightning bugs rise, the South offers one quiet reason to forgive the heat.

Darkness surrounds me so completely that I am momentarily blinded for the few moments it takes my eyes to adjust. All the sounds of the night are in the midst of reprising their chorus as I belatedly take my seat for the performance that requires no advance ticket purchase, no hectic parking lot maneuvering, and certainly no security funnels that make you rethink what jewelry and personal items accompany you.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, humor me as I first opine a bit.

There are precious few things I enjoy about the Southern summer and heat, particularly when it makes me rethink the act of opening a car door and sitting inside. Deliberating on exactly what amount of torture and burn level I am willing to endure to sit on a roasting car seat that makes hellfire seem moderate in comparison—all to take a break from hibernation inside my own temperature-controlled walls and venture to a different, blessedly cooled set of walls—is a daily occurrence this time of year.

Some of you may have never experienced the South that existed before air conditioners colonized this broad swath of the country. Those large, handheld church fans were not swag, they were redemption in the guise of paper glued to a popsicle stick. You were not going to survive Sunday without it; even prayer has its limits in this climate.

Oh the box fans, that lifeguard. Surely being wrestled to the ground by a sumo wrestler is a lighter sentence than the oppressive humidity that makes a succubus envious. Etiquette dictates that the only proper way of sitting in front of a box fan is with your face inches from the center, so as to ensure sweat runs in opposition to gravity. Unless of course it is nighttime, in which case your sleeping position must be adjusted to be in the direct path of its wind turbulence that could spawn a tornado.

The inflows of migration to the South would never have been possible without air conditioning. Society is not built to withstand such trials.

But as much as I cannot stand the summer months, the South is still home. You take the good with the bad. There are not adequate words to describe the luck of coming across an old, beat-up pickup truck on the side of the road with a truck bed full of ripe watermelons or sitting on the edge of a shaded front porch, swinging your feet while you drop salted peanuts into a glass bottle of Coke and take a swig. Ginormous slushies from the local gas station, with a veritable buffet of completely unnatural but alluring neon colors. Fresh boiled peanuts being sold on a different stretch of road from the watermelons, steaming as they are placed inside of a nondescript Styrofoam cup. And of course everyone gets their own cup, because who is really going to share from a single cup? Southern hospitality is simply not compatible with the act of rationing boiled peanuts.

To this day, the sound and feel of a box fan blowing will put me to sleep faster than a dose of Benadryl. I immediately go back to my youth and summers in an even deeper part of the South than where I live now. The fatigue of swimming for hours and hours along with other general childhood activities consumes my body decades later whenever I am in proximity to that spinning vortex. Apparently wormholes and time travel exist.

But if there is perhaps a single redeeming grace to the maelstrom of heat and humidity that permeates every atom of my being—it is the night. Specifically, a Southern summer night. The sole time of day when the earth exhales so totally I feel it in my bones. It is the fervent apology for the preceding hours of daylight, an unchoreographed perfection that leaves me with no choice but to forgive and immerse myself into its web.

And so it was in this vein that I found myself blinded by the darkness. The sounds of the night are a show unto themselves, but the distinction of headliner that specific evening went to the lightning bugs. Their opening night, the first appearance of the season, and they did not disappoint.

I sat on my patio, in nightclothes and swaddled in a light hoodie, as my patience was rewarded. One flicker, then two, and more followed. Lights of varying patterns and frequency dotted the canopy of my peach tree. Floating orbs of whimsy and beauty that found a haven and a rapt audience that never wanted to leave. The world kept spinning though time stood still. If music danced, it would appear just so.

Lightning bugs have serenaded generations, bringing a still peace to weary, overworked souls of every color. With every creak of a rocking chair pushed by aging bones or giggle of children running around with mason jars, the light show had something for everyone.

Truth be told, I would have stayed till the wee hours of the morn had my eyes not waived the white flag of surrender to the weight of sleep beckoning me closer. Until tomorrow, my shimmering friends.

Another day of temperatures that take no prisoners awaits, an ever-present reminder that Southerners are forged in fire. But we are also dipped in the basin of night’s shade illuminated by Mother Nature’s littlest dancers.

And to those wee lightning bugs whose artform serves as an ambassador of peace from an otherwise inhospitable place—thank you.

Because of you, we shall all endure.