Bliss

The problem with growing up is it tends to dull the imagination. The once boundless mind is progressively netted and tethered to our best guess at reality. The giant, gray realm of what may possibly be so is slowly divided into the blacks and whites of what is and what isn't. There are no super powers it turns out. No heroes, no magic, no mystery, no unexplored realms to explore or things to be discovered. The Tooth Fairy dies fairly early. The Easter Bunny becomes a silly notion not too long after. Santa survives for a whole but one day too becomes an embarrassing figure you used to believe in. And even science, the last frontier, starts to slowly plod along at a plainly predictable rate. In such a world it is perhaps remarkable the imagination survives at all, but it does in part, I think, thanks to nature's little miracles. And in this case: the firefly.

I'd admittedly almost forgotten they exist. I had gotten so used to the various stinging and poking bugs of South Texas and the unfortunate fruit fly holocaust I had to visit upon my own apartment, that my recollection of summers in the Ozarks began to fade. My move to New Hampshire, however, has thankfully brought all the memories back -- and with half the humidity. There's something magical about seeing the brief flicker of lightening floating lightly in the trees. Although they're often too small and few in number to be all that much to really, truly look at their mere presence pulls the dusty drape off the imagination switch in our brains and briefly makes one's mind young again. Free to dream about whatever it is you please to dream about. Tempered a bit by reality yes, but the passive day dream confined to times of listless boredom is replaced by the active, excited dream fashioned from one's own active imagination. The world, for a moment, doesn't seem so old any more. All because of a simple bug with a glowing green bottom. For these guys alone I gotta say New Hampshire's pretty great.

Between the fireflies, black bears running wild, deep green mountain forests, and small colonial towns I am beginning to believe maybe I have entered some realm of Old World make believe. What's next? A mossy glen full of hatted gnomes? Routine travel by hot air balloon and gyrocopter?










Oh snap, they're already doing it! Here's to hoping for a dark haired gypsy maiden. Or at the very least a not unpleasant looking divorcee with a friendly disposition.