I have to say — somewhat wistfully — that I did not find any fireflies on Sachem’s Head this time…

I asked several of my cousins (first and second, at various levels of remove) if they’d seen fireflies around this year, and what they thought my chances of a sighting were. And my cousins would get an inward look while they considered.

As if they’d not thought about fireflies for quite some time…

Then they told me they thought lightning bugs came early in the summer. But now that they thought about it: they couldn’t say for certain that they’d seen any lightning bugs this year. Indeed, they seemed to have some difficulty remembering just when their last sighting of them might have been.

In turn I wondered whether lightning bugs might be in decline — had the climate perhaps undergone a subtle change? Or had the lightning bugs sensed a greater need for astonishment somewhere else, and shifted there?

Now that everybody drives so fast down Vineyard Point Road; past the hollow oak which marks the dirt-road turning down to Benton Beach; and past the fleeting deer…

Who still notices the stately beauty of the egrets as they stalk like ghosts in unmown salt meadows? Who takes time to spy out the fiddler crabs tucked in their thumb-sized mudholes, wielding a single (in)substantial claw in fearless self defense?

And who else longs to see — just one more time — the dairy cows that used to graze at Sachem’s Head, all day ruminating to the lull of waves, their liquid cow-eyes gazing considerately past Faulkner’s light, and across Long Island Sound?

While Uncle Milton’s old, red barn slips silently into the remembered past…

No, the best that I could do as far as fireflies go was an old, pale blue glass canning jar I paid $2 for, with its old, pale blue glass lid still held in place by a circlet of rusting wire. The jar is empty, but the front reads “TRADE MARK” in small, with

L I G H T N I N G

in large, embossed letters just below.

I ask you: could any status-conscious lightning bug resist?

And so there’s hope.