Lightning Bugs

Olango island is a wildlife sanctuary made famous for being a bird migration stopover.  Birds from China, Japan, Korea and other countries north of the Philippines come to this place during winter months in the northern hemisphere.  A few months after they leave, another bird migration takes over, led by birds coming Indonesia and even those coming from Australia, New Zealand and the neighboring parts of the Southern hemisphere in a space superhighway called the Austral-Asia Flyway.

In December 2006, we hosted camp in Olango involving Korean volunteers.  The base camp was near a lagoon.  It has no electricity and isolated from the rest of the houses of local residents.  Illuminated only by faint lights of gas lamps, one can not see clearly the surroundings.  One camper suddenly gasped and pointed up a tree.  The others followed her gaze and also gasped at what they saw.  Moments later, they were pointing in many different directions and gasping the whole time.  What did they see?  Blinking lights flying above the tree branches.  Fireflies!  Lighting bugs as Mark Twain used to call them.  It was mating season and they came out in numbers like lights to a Christmas tree. 

These people are ignorant, I thought to myself.  But it is little things like these that give you simple joy.  I begin to look around and rediscover the wealth I have in my own backyard.  From that day onward, I regained my fascination with fireflies.  I remember those nights in Grandpa’s house in the mountains when we would gather lightning bugs in a clear glass container and use it as a lamp.  And it brought us endless fascination seeing blinking bugs in competition.  And Grandpa would start telling his stories of ghosts, goblins and little people.  We would huddle together close to Grandpa and savor every word he says.  To my recollection, Grandpa was larger than life, and even in death, I can see his face, always smiling, beckoning, and eager to tell his enchanting stories again….