The Late Summer Storm

Our farmhouse was 2/3 up from the bottom of the valley. Down below was a little stream you could step across in one stride. Onn the house side of the road was another stream than ran down to the valley that carved its way though the millennia of sedimentary rock to create a perfect stairway all the way up the valley. In the winter the stream somehow made spiral icicles like springs that formed on branches near the water. In the summer the star step steam bank glowed green at night from Foxfire.
    At the bottom pasture next to the valley stream I had just put up a screen house tent I had not used in some time. It kept out mosquitos at night with walls of fine mesh screens. There were rumors of Hurricane Agnes moving in and stalling hundreds of miles inland so if was ever going to use the tent I had little time.

It was near sundown when I made my way down to the bottom and hopped across the valley stream to the tent. The pasture was sparkling with fire flies. When the first armband of the slowing hurricane arrived it was after dark an it drenched the walls of the tent like solid walls of water. The fire flies sought cover and the tent offered a little bit of protective overhang. A flash of lightening turned the walls of the water soaked tent solid walls of intense light. When my eyes readjusted to the night I saw a single firefly illuminate a six foot diameter globe of light reflected through the wet screen mesh.
Each little space in the mesh had become a micro lens and magnified the tiny light of the firefly. There were hundreds of thousands of micro lens made of water making light bright enough to read from a single firefly. Next there were hundreds of fireflies outside the tent filling the entire interior of the tent with resplendent yellow green light.

The first band of showers passed and I climbed up and back to the house. It rained for 14 days and the 4 foot wide creek became a half mile wide. When I returned to the pasture there was only one small trace of the tent snagged on an ironwood tree but I learned how to magnify a micro watt of light into shadow free ambient interior lighting. All from fireflies in the rain.