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The Quest For Fire
Aug. 4th, 2015 09:27 pmFoxfire!
I have always been intrigued with 'glow in the dark' objects. As a child we had a plastic Reddy Kilowatt figure with light purple phosphorescent hands (similar to this one). I had one of those hands for years after Reddy was tossed out. And I had (still have) a Mattel ThingMaker for which they finally made glowing Plastigoop! I'll write about that some year... Oh, and my wrist watches with glowing hands. Well, that's some background.
I think the most fascinating of glowing objects, though, were the bioluminescent ones (I mentioned that in my fireflies post). A book given me by my grandmother, Voices in the Meadow, had a scene where the main characters sought out a rotting stump that glowed at night:
That passage primed my imagination, and from that point on I was determined to see this phenomenon for myself, thinking how cool it must be to find such an object in the woods at night...
And 51 years on I finally did! I wish I could say I saw a huge glowing stump, a dark mound surrounded by a greenish aura, but that didn't happen, nor matter to me. What I found I first attributed to glow worms (we have those wondrous things as well, in pulsating patches, here and there in the dark woods). No, I was walking through the dogs' yard, 9:30 at night, out among the hickories and near to the clumps of Indian Pipes, when I saw a faint green glow by a log. I reached down to feel if it was indeed worms in moist soil, but found instead glowing chips of wood! Nearby I found more tendrils of green glowing from a rotting log.
Honestly, I'll admit I cried, mushy as it sounds. This was a wonderful gift among all the delights I had seen all week, all Summer for that matter. I was able to share my discovery with my youngest son and my daughter. I can't share it here because my 'real' camera only exposes for two seconds max and the light was too faint to register. This is the log in daylight, though. I'll give it another look tonight after this posts* (the second night I looked for the foxfire it was gone, at least the chips I could find didn't or no longer glowed: the other log had pin-pricks of light).
I have seen the light!
*hooray! There was at least one chip visible :o)
I have always been intrigued with 'glow in the dark' objects. As a child we had a plastic Reddy Kilowatt figure with light purple phosphorescent hands (similar to this one). I had one of those hands for years after Reddy was tossed out. And I had (still have) a Mattel ThingMaker for which they finally made glowing Plastigoop! I'll write about that some year... Oh, and my wrist watches with glowing hands. Well, that's some background.
I think the most fascinating of glowing objects, though, were the bioluminescent ones (I mentioned that in my fireflies post). A book given me by my grandmother, Voices in the Meadow, had a scene where the main characters sought out a rotting stump that glowed at night:
That passage primed my imagination, and from that point on I was determined to see this phenomenon for myself, thinking how cool it must be to find such an object in the woods at night...
And 51 years on I finally did! I wish I could say I saw a huge glowing stump, a dark mound surrounded by a greenish aura, but that didn't happen, nor matter to me. What I found I first attributed to glow worms (we have those wondrous things as well, in pulsating patches, here and there in the dark woods). No, I was walking through the dogs' yard, 9:30 at night, out among the hickories and near to the clumps of Indian Pipes, when I saw a faint green glow by a log. I reached down to feel if it was indeed worms in moist soil, but found instead glowing chips of wood! Nearby I found more tendrils of green glowing from a rotting log.
Honestly, I'll admit I cried, mushy as it sounds. This was a wonderful gift among all the delights I had seen all week, all Summer for that matter. I was able to share my discovery with my youngest son and my daughter. I can't share it here because my 'real' camera only exposes for two seconds max and the light was too faint to register. This is the log in daylight, though. I'll give it another look tonight after this posts* (the second night I looked for the foxfire it was gone, at least the chips I could find didn't or no longer glowed: the other log had pin-pricks of light).
I have seen the light!
*hooray! There was at least one chip visible :o)
