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For the last few weeks of June and into July, the woods throughout Grandfather Mountain shimmer. The lights start low, tuning up near the grass, and as the sun sets, the flickers rise with the shadows to the tree canopy. Children gather, they reach, they capture and release our lightning bugs back to the sky, little Prometheuses revealing green fire to the world.
Photinus carolinus photograph by Mike Quinn
North Carolina has about 40 firefly species, those beetles that hold light in their bellies. Only two, however, coordinate their aerial flashes. One such species of synchronous fireflies — Photinus carolinus — lives in the Great Smoky Mountains. As far as we know, they’re found at elevations above 2,000 feet.
Until the 1990s, the world believed only fireflies living in Asia could synchronize their flashes. Lynn Faust knew better. She watched the evening world from her porch in Tennessee and contacted researchers to pay attention like she did. They discovered that Tennessee and North Carolina have synchronous fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains. In 2019, entomologist Clyde Sorenson was teaching a pollinator workshop at Grandfather Mountain. As the sun set, he realized that these preternatural beetles lived there, too. He discovered this like Faust did — by watching. By paying attention.
After Sorenson noticed the fireflies, John Caveny, director of conservation and education for the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation, went outside to count them. “I turned a few circles with a clipboard in my hand,” he says. “I was in shock at the number of individuals — I completely forgot that I was supposed to be trying to count them.”
These flash coordinators didn’t just show up — they’ve always been there. We just weren’t paying attention. Now, we have new eyes to see the world. Now, we can become a part of their dance.
“I have only been left speechless by a natural phenomenon a handful of times in my life,” Caveny says. “This was one of them.”
Fireflies start off as eggs and spend most of their lives as ground-bound grubs that look like armored tanks. For about two years, they crawl around the forest floor, eating snails and earthworms, before pupating. When they emerge as adults, synchronous fireflies live about three weeks. They don’t eat. They are forces only of love, of longing for a pairing.
Synchronous fireflies may resemble ordinary lightning bugs, but en masse, these little fellas set themselves apart by performing dazzling light shows in mountain woods, like these at Grandfather Mountain. photograph by JIM MAGRUDER/MAGRUDERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
They speak to each other with pure light. Each species has its own Morse code. Big Dipper fireflies, for example, blink dots and J’s into the air. Blue ghosts float their steady auras like tiny, supernatural fairies. Synchronous fireflies flash, flash, flash, flash and go dark. Every type of firefly in the air asks the same question in its own language:
Where are you, my love? Will you love me?
From the ground, females blink back:
I’m here. I will. I will love you.
Because females whisper their replies with a dim glimmer, synchronous firefly males need darkness to find their mates. Across our mountain skies, after some practice tunings, the males come together to create the darkness they need. They pass the flash across each other like a wave, stunning the ground below. Then, they wait. Then, we all wait.
How is there room in this world for love in a beetle’s breath? How is there still room in this world to discover these tremendous feats? Because there is space for silence, if we make it. Space for wonder, if we pay attention.
Grandfather Mountain
2050 Blowing Rock Highway
Linville, NC 28646
(800) 468-7325
grandfather.com
For ticket lottery information, visit grandfather.com/fireflies.
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