Pink Slippers, Black Nights, and Blue Ghosts

“Perhaps, the most courageous thing we can do as a people is to behold.”

Mako Fujimura

I won’t lie; May and June have been tough months. On a personal level, my family is currently coping with injuries, illness, and loss, while collectively, our world grapples with an endangered planet, violent conflicts, and a pervasive mood of despair.

And yet, through it all, Mother Nature faithfully carries on. Her seasons and cycles persist, offering often unseen signs of hope, and opportunities for—dare I say—delight. Flowers bloom, stars shine, species propagate. In fact, when it comes to natural phenomena, May and June have been especially showy months here in the mountains of Western North Carolina…

First off, Pink Lady’s Slippers.

This gorgeous wildflower is a Carolina native from the orchid family.  It grows best in the partial shade of pine and oak forests, flowering throughout May and early June. I’d seen photographs of this exotic flower that loosely resembles a woman’s puffy shoe or moccasin, which stirred my imagination.

Once the calendar turned to May, a friend invited me on a hike to admire these beauties growing in the wild. She remembered seeing them several years ago just off a marked trail in the Pisgah National Forest. But once we got to the trailhead, things looked different to her. New forks had been added and some areas were no longer accessible. And so, the search—and the adventure—was on!

About a half mile in, we asked a returning hiker if she’d spotted any Lady’s Slippers and she said yes, she’d seen one. One. With our expectation bars lowered, we continued walking until my friend recognized a grove of pines about 600 feet off the trail. “I think that’s where they are!”

We walked carefully among the clustered guests, taking in their finery. Ribbed leaves formed a sturdy base for their long stalks, each of which supported a single flower. I moved in close to appreciate the intricate veining and soft, satiny texture of the blooms. What a treat it was to discover them—like a secret, exclusive garden. I couldn’t help thinking that sometime within the next two to three months, the flowers and leaves would wither away, disappearing without a trace.

Secondly, stargazing surprises.

The news had billed the Tau Herculids as a once-in-a-lifetime meteor storm. My husband and I retire early most nights, but we agreed this celestial event would be worth setting an alarm and getting out of bed to see. So, at 1:00AM on May 31, we threw on our robes and, with great anticipation, headed outside to our second-story deck.

It was a new moon and the sky was clear and dark (we’re lucky to have minimal light pollution where we live). From our vantage point, nothing obstructed our view of the handle of the Big Dipper, where the spectacle was supposed to commence.

We craned our necks and waited patiently. Although the display of stars was captivating, there was no meteor storm that we could see. Twice I detected a blur of motion in my periphery, but it was so quick that it may have been my eyes playing tricks on me. And yet, that night we were surrounded by a galaxy of hundreds of thousands of brilliant blinking lights.

Indeed, the real “stars” of the late-night entertainment show were the fireflies. They were flashing and dazzling non-stop, lighting up the darkness from the grasses and low bushes of our backyard to the uppermost edge of the tree line. Black treetops merged with black sky and it was easy to confuse high-flying lightening bugs for twinkling stars—they were that bright and intense. It was a mating extravaganza! Flash after flash after flash, tiny romances sparked in an amazing orchestration of patterns and rhythms.  

Knowing that these courtships would continue through the first half of June, I made a point of going out onto the deck over the course of the next couple weeks whenever I happened to wake up between midnight and 2:00AM. Unlike overhyped meteor showers, the passionate fireflies never disappointed; their stamina is simply astounding.

Thirdly, Blue Ghost Fireflies.

You can’t live in the Southern Appalachians without hearing about these colorfully-named fireflies—it’s the only place on Earth they are found. What makes them unique (and somewhat eerie or “ghostly”) is that they do not flash their lights, but glow continuously in their forested habitat. As with all fireflies, producing light is part of their mating ritual. They make their luminous appearance once a year during a brief mating season, which peaks mid-May to mid-June.

To learn more, I attended a presentation by Dr. Jennifer Frick-Ruppert, an environmental science professor who has researched them extensively. She explained that these fireflies are small—about the size of a grain of rice—and that only the males can fly. But they are “clumsy” fliers at best, hovering low to the ground, hoping to attract the attention of wingless females crawling and feeding in the leaf-litter on the forest floor. This species prefers moist environments and are often found near streams.

My daughter and her family live very close to Dupont State Forest, an area famous for Blue Ghost sightings. In past years, they’ve seen an abundance of the glowing bluish-white lights (said to be itty-bitty lanterns carried by the ghosts of fallen Confederate soldiers) right on their own wooded property. It was time for a Blue Ghost watch party! I’m not sure who was more excited, my two young grandsons or me.

At dusk, the whole family, outfitted with headlamps, trekked through the drizzly woods to a creek at the edge of their property. My older grandson was my guide, taking my hand, warning me of obstacles along the dark path he knows so well. When we reached a stand of rhododendrons near the creek, we switched our headlamps from white to red light and settled ourselves onto blankets and camp chairs. Once situated, we turned off our lamps completely and quieted our bodies and conversations, speaking only in whispers.

It wasn’t long before tiny lights emerged from the darkness around us—silent, steady, and magical. Some were mere inches off the ground; none flew higher than three or four feet above the forest floor. Some drifted, some darted, but most were traveling downward, seeking out females in the dark, wet leaves below. Their movements made me think of glowing minnows in a deep, black pond. A few came surprisingly close, swimming toward our outstretched hands.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

W.B. Yeats

During these troubled times, I intend to regularly seek out ways to experience “wonder” in nature. That means getting outside of my head and outside my house to “behold”—to find courage by focusing fully on our amazing living world.

For me, this never fails to inspire a childlike spirit of adventure and discovery. But one must be willing to veer off the well-traveled trail, leave a cozy bed and venture outside in the middle of the night, or sit patiently in the pitch dark of a rainy, wet woods for as many hours as it takes.

It’s so worth it. Because even though such marvels don’t provide a cure for heartbreak or the ills of this world, they do provide a measure of happiness, along with some much-needed respite from life’s miseries.

“…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination…“

Mary Oliver, Wild Geese