Firefly Nights
Howdy everyone,
Happy June! Happy pride month, men's mental health month, great outdoors month, whichever celebration pertains to you! To catch y’all up since May, I went back to Texas for a few days to celebrate my brother's graduation and birthday. It was wonderful and I very much enjoyed my time being home. It was a lot of go go go which was wonderful but just slightly chaotic. As I came back to the great state of Tennessee though, little did I know, a lot more chaos was about to come my way.
To start everything off, the housing that I reside in has been having a few issues… Flooding issues… So as of a week and a half ago, showering and washing clothes have not been an option in the house. The staff at my location and other housemates have been working tirelessly to get this problem resolved with no luck. The effort is appreciated but patience runs thin whenever there's five girls and three guys in a house with close to no water. On top of that, we have lost about eight fellow employees in the span of two weeks. Which has everyone on edge and just trying to make it through each week without any guests wondering what's going on. So the theme of the past two weeks? Chaos, flexibility, patience. Things my little anxiety riddled brain is not exactly up to par on. But this has been a wonderful time to really look inwards and realize all of the problems going on, are all things that are completely out of my control. The fact that I cannot do anything close to helpful in these situations has helped me realize that all I can do is be patient and try not to pull my hair out.
In better news, it is firefly week here in GSM National Park! For those who are not aware, there is this natural phenomenon that happens in the Great Smokys each year where a specific species of firefly synchronizes their flashing glow for the mating season. These fireflies will blink 5 - 8 times and then go dark for about 8 seconds before repeating the process. It is a truly magical display of light and wonderment. The national park puts on a lottery as a way to help mitigate the amount of people coming into the park and accidentally disrupting the fireflies. Over 20,000 people throw their hat into this ring to win the chance to see these amazing insects, but the park only allows 1,120 vehicles to enter the designated area throughout the entire week. Like many many others, I did not win the lottery. But thanks to my job, I did know of other locations where the fireflies were synchronizing. And Monday night, I made my way to one of these suspected, secret locations.
After waiting for about an hour in the slowly darkening Tennessee forest, I was sure that I was wrong. That I somehow had messed up the location and there were no fireflies near this place. So with a heavy, disappointed heart I started making my way through the forest back towards the car, with the hope of seeing the fireflies fading away as the light did. And right as the forest turned from the smallest sliver of dusk to night, there they were. They were everywhere. It is as if they were waiting for just the perfect moment to make their sparkling debut. They blinked in the trees and the shrubbery lining the trail, creating this ethereal version of the otherwise dark and looming wood. As I watched in disbelief of their presence, another surprise happened, and they began synchronizing. These tiny bugs would blink multiple times and then go dark all around me. I just stood and watched their display, in awe and amazement. Another little secret of the Great Smoky Mountains is not only do they have synchronous fireflies, they have another species of firefly nicknamed “ghost fireflies”. These fireflies are not synchronous, but instead of having a vibrant yellow or green glow, their blink is the palest of blues. These beautiful and frankly mysterious insects were all around, mingling with the yellow and green glows. They would blink their soft blue light, that almost the same shade as the moonlight, quickly enough that if you blinked you could miss it. After watching their beautifully haunting display of searching for love for close to an hour, I returned to the car with the most excited feeling. And I sat in the car, reeling from the natural light show I just bore witness to, the irony of patience hit me. I was sure that I was wrong and that these small creatures were not at the location. I was ready to give up and live in disappointment. But if I had just been patient and still for a few more minutes, then I would have been in the thickest, darkest part of the wood and who knows what sort of show the fireflies were doing there.
The fireflies also brought me a lesson in intentionality. There are fireflies all over Tennessee. The ones at camp come out right around dusk, but they are not synchronous. I went out into the forest right before dusk because I assumed that these fireflies are the same as the ones at the camp location, and I was wrong. The fireflies that were in the National Park showed themselves right as the light left the forest not as it was dimming. These fireflies intentionally showed themselves at their perfect time. The bugs know what time is best for them, regardless of some of the other bugs. They are intentional with their light and their timing. This lesson can be transferred over to human life. How many times do we rush into something in our lives? What if we were intentional with every act we committed? How would our lives change? These fireflies chose this time when their light would be the brightest to their other fireflies. They did not light up earlier to just go ahead and get it over with. They were intentional. I think we all could learn a lot from fireflies, from patience to intentionality to the way they shine. There are lessons within nature, we just have to be open to receiving them.
To wrap this all up. I have learned that “all good things come to those who wait” is not just a phrase our elders tell us so we calm down and be quiet for a few minutes. There is actually some truth to it and patience truly is a virtue. A virtue I need to work on. But a virtue nonetheless. I am going to start being more mindful of my intentionality with the actions I take in my life. Instead of trying to rush to get some things done quickly, I will begin really slowing myself down, making sure that the things I am doing are intentional and will bring good back into my life. I will never forget the tiny fireflies that are capable of lighting up an entire forest. There is power in that. Which is another lesson the fireflies have given me to contemplate. At the end of the day, patience is something I have had to practice a lot more recently than I thought I would, but the pay off will be dazzling, I am sure. Thank you for being here. Practice patience, live intentionally, be a firefly.
See you out there,
N
