Firefly

I close my eyes and steep myself into a long ago darkness. Even though I had not yet turned three, I see the scenes etched in my memory like I’m watching a video taken from the vantage point of a toddler. On a warm summer night I’m walking on a forest trail with a group of people. I assume they are all adults, probably relatives and friends of the family whose names and faces I cannot recall; but everyone seems big when you are at their knee level. My mom’s hand guides me along in what might otherwise be a spooky environ. In my hands I carry an empty jar that my mom had entrusted me to carry with both hands.

The forest canopy blocks out what would otherwise be a star filled sky. All I can see from my perspective are glimpses of numerous pairs of legs and the lanterns that many in our group are carrying. The night is so dark that I can’t see my feet when they are cast in shadow from the light of the lanterns all around me.

Mom tells me to listen to the sounds of the forest. I hear the wind whistling through the trees, resulting in the rustling of the leaves high above me. At times, I hear the hoot of an owl or two and the chirping sounds of crickets that dissipate as we approach and resume after our passing. I hear the shuffling/treading of multiple pairs of feet, each with a different cadence. I hear running water that comes from a small stream that is close to the path, but hidden by the grass on its banks – at least from someone three feet high.

I then hear the wind with clarity as it sweeps lightly past me, leaving brilliant trails in the darkness in the direction we are walking. We round an outcropping and I hear a collective gasp as we approach a small lake. All the lanterns are extinguished as everyone comes to a stop. I don’t know why everyone seems to be excited until I make my way with my mom’s help to a point where I can see what’s happening. Although I was too young then to quantify what I saw, what I now know to be thousands of fireflies danced above the lake, their hot glare reflected in the glassy water like a shower of sparks. I’m sure that I had no idea that it was a once in a lifetime, awe-inspiring event.

Mom asked me for the jar, so I handed it to her. She unscrewed the lid, then swiped across the sky, capturing one of the points of light. After screwing the lid back on, she handed it to me, saying, “This is for you.”

In an instant, the mass of fireflies in unison swarmed away from us across the lake into the forest across the way. It seemed like I blinked to find the night a few degrees darker than it had been seconds earlier.

With the fireflies gone, the focus segued to the sky. In a forest in the mountains away from city lights, individual stars and clusters are so vivid to the naked eye. We all sat down on rocks near the lake. I saw shooting stars for the first time, recalling now the sense of wonder and excitement while watching nature’s light show.

As we walked back up the trail, I felt like my jar seemed to be a smaller version of the lanterns others were carrying. I don’t remember anything beyond that since I fell asleep at some point. When we got home, my mom went into the house while I stayed out on the porch. I put my firefly jar on a railing and watched my new pet. It flittered around the jar, up, down, side to side. I had a sense that it was confused by the invisible walls around it and wanted to escape. I opened the jar and told the bug, “Fly away, firefly!”

It crawled up the inside of the jar, stopped on the jar’s lip apparently testing to see if this was for real; but rather than fly away, it lighted on the railing. For a few seconds neither of us made a move as we seemed to study each other. After a minute, the firefly took to the air as if some desire to do so suddenly came over it, tracing an arc as it floated away in the darkness, slowly diminishing in size and brightness. Long after the firefly disappeared, the trail of light remained within me, its faint glow flickering off and on in my memory. More than once, I stretched my hand into the darkness, my fingers touching nothing, the faint glow just beyond my grasp.

In the context of time and space, a single firefly is so insignificant; but decades later, I identify with that little insect that found itself trapped. I also understand why that little boy released it. I have within me the ability to brighten the lives of others. Like that firefly so long ago, I need to be, deserve to be… free.

The road was, I told Alan to follow closely behind me. The road was gravel and I knew that the dirt trail to the cemetery was about a hundred yards to the north. I followed the edge of the road until I felt an opening to my right that indicated the trailhead.

We walked carefully while differentiating the dirt trail that had been well traveled and the scrub and tall grass that encompassed it. The trail meandered through two valleys, one that had a bridge over a stream that had been built from a large koa tree that was about eight feet in circumference. Koa wood had been used extensively for the building of canoes and ships to the point where there were now none left on the island that were more than a couple of feet wide.

I heard the sound of running water ahead, so knew that the bridge was up ahead. Through the mist I saw a soft light bob up and down just this side of the bridge. I also heard the unmistakable sound a rifle makes when walking with one strapped on the shoulder as it clanks against one’s body. I knew that there were a bunch of pot farmers inland from our camp who were very protective of their property. I had seen a bunch of signs that said KAPU (forbidden) STAY OUT posted on trees on some of the hikes I’d been on. It would be best to stay unseen on their home turf. I shhh’d Alan and led him to a spot behind some brush just off the path.

Three men walked by a foot away from us, all of them armed with rifles. Their focus was on the path, so the light from their flashlight shone yards ahead of them. It was a relief when they passed way beyond us over the rise we had just come from.

We crossed the stream carefully over the bridge that had only a single rope as a hand-hold on one side. After traversing over a final rise, I knew that the cemetery was just ahead. Past that, the forest was much less dense and there were some fields that were used as cow pastures.

As we approached the cemetery, we stopped short. Through the mist and dense trees we saw a number of lights moving randomly. It looked like a group of people were searching for something. I slowly walked toward the small, iron gate that opened onto the grounds (there was a large double gate at the main entrance) with Alan on my heels.

What we saw next made us both freeze in something between horror and shock. The cemetery was about two acres squared. In every direction we looked there were what looked like balls of light from a foot to a foot and a half in size floating randomly three to six feet in the air. It was obvious that there was no solidity to them, just a luminosity that was brightest at the core. As I walked toward them, Alan grabbed the back of my shirt. I turned and saw that his mouth was opening and closing; but there was no sound emanating from his mouth. The lights didn’t seem to notice or care that we were there; a number of them floated past us without incident.

Suddenly, Alan let loose a terrible scream, then ran toward the front entrance. I soon lost sight of him through the mist, but heard the clanging of the iron gates being shut in haste. Unlike my friend, my curiosity precluded me from leaving, and I sensed that the lights posed no danger to me. I was suddenly very cold. This is unusual in the islands, especially in the summer. If it’s ninety degrees during the day, it’s still above seventy at night. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts with sandals. I got goose-bumps all over as I watched in awe as about three dozen of the lights moved around the graves. Whenever two of the globes were about to collide, they seemed to dance gracefully around each other.

About three years before, my Mom told me about her being in Japan at the close of WWII. She recounted how at night she often saw what seemed like globes of light shimmer across the waters and float over the land. She believed that these were what some call souls or life-lights. She explained that she felt no fear of them. Everyone seemed to matter-of-factly acknowledge their existence with no semblance of fear. It was just part of the natural course of things in their world.

I felt that what I was seeing before me in a Hawaiian wilderness was the same as what my Mom had recounted to me as happening twenty years before in Japan. I walked up to the closest light and reached out to touch it. I wasn’t able to – as soon as my finger was about to enter the ball of light, it reacted like a helium balloon would if you poked at one with your finger; it floated away.

I noticed that the larger the globe was, the higher it was, the highest being about six feet high. I assumed that the highest were also the oldest. I had so many questions I wanted answered. Who were they? What were they seeking? How often did they appear? Why were they the only ones in the graveyard when there were hundreds of graves there? Could we communicate with each other?

I shivered when it suddenly got colder and I felt a presence behind me. When I turned around I saw a boy about my age and height. I said, “Whoa, you almost made me jump out of my skin!”

The boy who was dressed only in some tattered shorts said, “Aloha Bro.”

“Hey Dude,” I replied. “Damn, why’s it so cold here? I’ve never felt like this before; I’ve got goose bumps all over!”

“I used to hate when that happened. Hey, there’s a huge storm coming; the flash floods are really bad here. You need to get back to your camp which is on high ground. There’s a lantern there that you can use.”

I turned around and saw a lantern on a large volcanic rock. I picked it up and when I turned back around, the boy was gone. I only saw a solitary globe disappear into the mist.

I called for Alan a few times. There was no answer, so I decided that whoever/whatever the boy was, I believed what he had told me, so I started back for camp as the rain started to come down in torrents. Without the lantern, I’m sure it would have taken much longer to get back.

The funny thing was that when I got back, everyone was awake and getting ready for breakfast in the mess tent, which means that it was around six a.m. I couldn’t believe that six hours had passed; it seemed like only an hour to me. I looked for Alan, but he was nowhere to be found. I found out later that he had run to the main road, hitched to the nearest gas station ten miles away, and used the phone to call his Dad to pick him up. This was found out after the troopmaster called Alan’s house and got this info from his mother, before calling the authorities to report a missing scout.

As our bus went by the cemetery, I asked the driver to stop real quick. I ran through the graveyard’s gates and put the lantern back on the rock where I had found it. I quickly ran back to the bus and got into a seat. As the bus started moving, I looked back and noticed that the lantern was gone.

I had a lot to sort out when I got back home. When I finally saw Alan when we got on the bus for school the next day, he insisted that nothing had happened, and he didn’t want to talk about it any more.