In keeping with my pledge to bike every day...I went out after dark.
Now, in my neighborhood out near the Mississippi River, that means that it's super dark. So, I took a little red LED flashlight out to my bike to supplement my very cool Knog White Frog White LED Bike Light that doesn't put any light on the road.
Biking at night is amazing. The air smells different. There are different sounds and the lack of some of the day sounds: no lawn mowers, drills, saws, people yelling, children shouting (not that there's anything wrong with any of those sounds) or traffic. There are just some things that you can't see or hear until the sun sets and the evening activities are set in motion. One cannot see bats in flight busying themselves with eating about 3 times their weight in mosquitoes. One cannot witness the magnificent silent flight of owls, hear coyotes or listen to the plaintive cries of nighthawks in flight.
Certainly there are things that one can only see at dawn and throughout the day and all those are bright, beautiful and worthy of our attention. As a night-person (which suits me well in my role as a campus pastor and the students who are up at all hours of the night) I bear witness to those nighttime events. While I love sunrises, morning glories, early bird songs and I'm grateful to those who regularly bear witness to those lovely occurrences, I am a person of the night. Each of us, in honor of all of our bio-rhythms, need to keep the vigil and learn from all manner of creation's activities around the clock.
Back to night biking: in support of night-biking safety, let's have a big yes to lights - both head lights and flashing red tail lights are essential. In the remote, lonely neighborhoods where there is little traffic, I ride on the center line. I do this for several reasons:
1) I can get to either side of the rode more quickly should the need arise.
2) riding on the thin white line can be actually hazardous: there can be debris at the side of the road - cans, boards and random things, including trash cans depending on which trash night it is around town and sometimes people accidentally leave the little doors to those on the side of the road mailboxes open - argh! If you hit this, it can leave a gash in your arm and if you're lucky enough to see it in time to swerve - well, you just might crash.
3) The center line is often more reflective and clearer than that thin, white line...
Biking in the dark is fine. It's sort of akin to walking in the dark. Anyone can do it. We did this a lot at camp without our flashlights at night walking to the Theater - that's what we called the bathrooms at Camp Hitaga - just to see if we could do it. Your eyes adjust to your night vision. Human beings, awash in the light pollution of the cities and streets lights in the country, somehow forget this incredibly nifty thing about our eyes. But riding a bike does require a bit of light and this is a good thing. I like riding at night because it narrows my focus to what's right in front of me. I like not being able to see what gear I'm in because I have to shift by feel. Usually - being me and an athlete - I love to push my limits and try to ride in 3x7th gear - the hardest gear on my bike. At night, I can't see the numbers at all and it's a good and freeing thing.
So, looking at the ground slightly ahead of my flashlight, I saw an unmistakable, tiny flashing light. It was a lightning bug in the road! I stopped to talk to it, picked it up and placed it on the side of the road so it could flash merrily away and not get run over. According to certain folks, my first-found lightning bug of the summer, also known as a firefly, was probably a female flashing from the ground to the males flying in the sky trying to find a mate. This is one of the holy occurrences that one can only see at night.
The official name of this incredible beetle is Lampyridae. As far as I can tell from my research of this cool insect, it is the only flying bioluminescent bug in the world! Imagine that! Scientists are still not sure how lightning bugs regulate the process of turning their lights on and off.
At camp there always seemed to be so many more lightning bugs than in town - kind of like how it is with the stars in the country where there is little light pollution. When I was riding my bike home two days earlier at dusk (the night that the o-so-exuberant-golden-retriever wanted to bite my shoe laces while I was riding) I saw the first star of the evening, though no lightning bugs on the way home that night.
Star light, star bright - first star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight...
I spoke this aloud as I rode along and then tried to sing, When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio, but I couldn't quite remember all the words. Oh well, "I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish...." But I couldn't make a wish at all. I was all wished out.
I'd been immersed in a sad family situation that seems to have no solution. No wishes. I'd already wished those all before. There is was again: in the midst of sadness there was beauty and in the midst of the beauty there was a recognition of the swirled messy, complicated-ness of life. A paradox.
Then, the lightning bug appeared in my path! I paused to meet it with joy!
I rather like to think that the lightning bugs are the incarnation of starlight on earth. They remind us that, though "we are stardust" as Joni Mitchell sings and the stars seem ever-so-far-away, the twinkling and flashes of the fireflies are God's little hint in the misty, summer indigo night sky that the starlight is closer than we can imagine. All we need to do, even when we've pitched all our wishes down the abyss of the well of life, is to wait for a new star, a new day, a new light and a new hope.
So, may the lightning bugs abound in back yards and city parks, at camp grounds and fields so that I might be reminded of the simple wonder of each flit and flicker. In so doing, thereby perhaps my wishing ability might be reignited for another night and I will be able to sing with childlike wonder:
Twinkle, twinkle little star how I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle little star how I wonder what you are
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