Fireflies

These amazing photos were taken in various places around Maniwa and Okayama Prefecture in Japan by photographer Tsuneaki Hiramatsu. http://inspir3d.net/2012/01/17/magical-slow-shutter-fireflies-by-tsuneaki-hiramatsu/

 

 

 

So it looks like I will be leaving my lovely new community, at least for awhile.  And although I am sad to go, I am actually excited about the future, which certainly hasn't happened in some time.  Now that I think about it, the last time I was really excited about the future was eight years ago, when the wasband finally got his teacher's certificate, and I expected him to look for a good paying job that he would enjoy - foolish girl! 

This early summer heat wave seems to have brought out insects aplenty, which would generally be a horrid situation for this bug-hater.  But along with the gnats, wasps, and swarms of carpenter bees, the *fireflies* are buzzing around like I have never seen before.  Every evening, I park my car, walk halfway up the driveway, and look around and around at all the little blinking lights.  On Thursday evening, the show was so amazing, I sat outside my door for 20minutes, arguing with myself to go inside and start the weekend cooking. This was the best firefly spectacle I have ever witness, better than I ever imaginged: the yard was almost perfectly dark, the area so wooded and secluded, the trees so tall, and I was right next to my house door, completely safe.  I could follow the individual flies, flying so fast and blinking at such short intervals that they almost looked like dotted-lines. And the glow was so bright, I could clearly see sparkles at the tops of trees that must be over 50ft tall.  I cannot possible describe how beautiful it was.  I kept thinking of the theme parks with little twinkling lights in the shrubbery, trying to make the surroundings "magical", and what a pathetic simulation that was compared to what I had outside my door.

This is a paradigm of what I particularly loved about the "new" neighborhood.  I have lived in the city (although not The CITY), all my life, and the only time I can remember really seen the stars well is when we traveled out to the "country" to go to the Renaissance Festival, and the view of the sky from the pitch-dark parking lot was superb.  Perhaps I saw stars as a child, but I certainly didn't appreciate them enough to have an image in my head.  So since then, I have wanted to go camping, mostly to be able to look up at night and just look at the stars (and start big fires, which is so cool). The wasband, to his credit, did try to arrange a camping trip, but it was cloudy most of the time.  I don't honestly think I will ever get a really great view of the stars,  the way all of humanity did for 5000 years.  I just don't expect to ever get any place so shielded from light-pollution.  But the fireflies...ahh, it is certainly a taste.