Flashes of Brilliance

If epiphanies tend to come in moments of silent solitude, early June at the Elkmont Campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park may be the last place you’d expect to have such an experience.

As host of the rare natural phenomenon of synchronous fireflies (aka Photinus carolinus), which flash in unison for a couple of weeks each early summer, the place takes on all the fanfare of a Super Bowl halftime.

Around 7 p.m., the first wave of firefly spectators show up, disembarking from a gaudy green, red, and yellow Gatlinburg Transit bus bearing fold-up chairs, cameras, backpacks full of snacks, and—ironically, considering six-legged creatures are the stars of the night—loads of bug spray. Park staff distribute brochures and red cellophane squares to cover flashlights when darkness sets in. (Apparently red light is less offensive to fireflies than white.)

Bus after bus roll in. People walk along the nearby Little River Trail, they sit on picnic blankets and soccer chairs, they gossip with friends and corral toddlers. By the time the last bus drops its load, nearly a thousand firefly seekers convene here. 

And for what, exactly? As I embarked on my two-hour drive to Elkmont last June, I harbored a healthy amount of skepticism. I had seen plenty of lightning bugs in my life, spent countless warm evenings watching those lazy-blinking yellow lights announce the beginning of summer. But I’d been told that synchronous fireflies were an entirely different animal. Found only in certain kinds of forest at certain elevations, the synchronous firefly spends most of its life underground, emerging for only three or four weeks of adult life to mate—made public by a light show in which the males all blink in unison—before dying. 

This area around Elkmont Campground is “primo” firefly habitat, according to park entomologist Becky Nichols. Increasing visitor traffic forced the park to regulate admission with $1.50 parking tickets, which are exceedingly hard to come by. Tickets sell out within minutes when released in late April. For many, seeing this show is as much a bucket list item as catching any musical hero in concert.

Yet, even as I admired the pretty summer scene as darkness fell—spectators’ silhouettes fading into the woods, green draining to black—I still didn’t get it. What were we all doing here?

Then, just as the darkness reached its climax, a gaggle of preteens behind me began shouting, hushedly: “Look, look!” I whirled around to see the evening’s opening act—a cluster of lights, so much whiter than the yellow fireflies I was used to, bursting in unison like a frazzled electric current thrown into the hemlock tree across the path. 

But the opening act rarely holds a candle to the headliner, you know? Likewise, the next performers easily eclipsed this little cluster of firefly loverboys. Cohorts of males steadily coalesced into larger and larger choruses of synchronized light, flashing blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink together before resting just long enough to do it again—a whole forest breaking into silent song.

They lit up the night for nearly two hours, until after 11 p.m. I’m sure the crowd would have called for an encore, had they known the words in firefly language. But despite our thundering arrival, we firefly watchers were a reverent bunch. Even those preteens soaked up the silent spirit of the moment.

And in that crowded patch of forest, I inexplicably found solitude—alone with the darkness and the fireflies and the silhouettes of leaves and trunks illuminated by bursts of light. Occasionally, a child’s voice carried through the air, or the red light of a headlamp cut through the darkness, but no disturbance was strong enough to pull me out of my reverie. 

In that moment, I was a pioneer, the only person to have ever marveled at the wonder of this fairy forest. Gone were the crowds, the picnic blankets, the soccer chairs—leaving only the light, the dark, and the transformation of my spirit.

Waynesville reporter Holly Kays is a forester’s daughter who is happy to live, write, and hike in the land of many trees.