A few casual conversations in the last couple of weeks have me thinking about fireflies. I have two very distinct images of fireflies that are tickling at the edges of my memory. I grew up on a small ranch just to the south-east of St. Francis, South Dakota.
A River of Fireflies
We were high on the plains, far from running water. Fireflies, in general, live in watersheds. If you follow the map from St. Francis south on BIA Route 13 you will cross the South Dakota/Nebraska border north of Kilgore at the Minnechaduza creek. The Minnechaduza meanders through a broad and shallow valley, a marshy tree lined watershed, filled with cottonwoods and cattails and a wide variety of low lying scrub and grass. The creek itself is small, maybe fifteen feet across at the widest, maybe three or four feet deep in certain holes. During the summer, when the heat lay heavy on the plains, on certain nights, if you drove south out of St. Francis down to the Minnechaduza, pulled off the side of the road and turned your headlights off, you would see…The entire watershed, from side to side, filled with fireflies. There were probably millions of them, a river of fireflies, glowing and flickering. Located in the middle of nowhere, only a few nearby ranches, the sky was a velvet black filled with an endless vista of stars from horizon to horizon, and beneath those stars, that river of fireflies. When the fireflies were particularly vivid word would spread and in a slow pilgrimage many of the people from the surrounding towns would make the drive down to the Minnechaduza deep in the stillness of the great plain's night to see that river of fireflies. Even now it is easy for me to close my eyes and see it. When I close my eyes and remember that river of fireflies I also remember quite vividly all the people I shared it with - friends, family, lovers. It is a good, poignant and powerful memory.
Fireflies On The Missouri
I was a Boy Scout growing up. (Troop 210 Rosebud, South Dakota). In the summer we would go to a week long Boy Scout camp at Lewis & Clark, on the Missouri river. I have some very fond memories of my days as Boy Scout - we had a great group of kids, some of whom remain my friends to this day, others I've lost touch with over time. Lewis & Clark nestles up against the northern bank of the Missouri River and the camp itself was bisected by apair of steep valleys that served as drainage from the surrounding plains. Those valleys were firefly havens. We would spend the evenings at Lewis & Clark running, playing, and sneaking through the night, engaged in a hundred games, formal and informal, organized and unorganized - and in my mind, many of those games are played in and among the soft glow of fireflies. It is here that I have the memories of jars full of fireflies, natural lanterns, whose soft glow filled old canvas tents as we lay there in the dark and told the stories of our young lives.
Fireflies In California
I have never seen fireflies in California. I have friends here who have never seen a firefly. I never really thought about that until now. I have seen many other wondrous things here, but never the magic of fireflies.
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