Memoir Monday: Fireflies

A good historian knows that their work does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it is the combination of their academic training, life experience, and other parts if one's personality. Memoir Mondays will be my attempt at acknowledging that reality.

One of my earliest memories is hunting for fireflies. It was summer in Mahtowa, Minnesota. The sun had set over that town of 52 people. I was maybe four years old. I was so excited to search for fireflies. I can't recall exactly what my prompting was. But my mother took me all over the yard. The slow brightening glow enraptured and I ran all over the yard. My little eyes could not track the bugs in flight well so I was easily distracted and my energy was being spent vigorously trying to get a better look at one of them. Perhaps this was my mother's means of getting me worn out before bed. Mom helped me get close enough to watch some for a while near our driveway. I hoped that capturing them would extend the beauty of the moment forever, but my mother assured me that bugs would not last forever in a jar. But we could come out again another night and play with the fireflies.

This memory strikes me now as an adult and as an environmental historian. The nostalgia of the cool night air and the excitement of being a boy catching bugs brings me a good bit of joy. But I can't help but wonder if the excitement of the moment ingrained in me something that has stuck with me into academic life. A chapter of my dissertation centered on Rocky Mountain Locusts. I have had long conversations about the insect and am now contemplating a paper on ticks. If I carry on like this I might become something of an insect historian, not that there is anything wrong with that. But it is neat think think that perhaps that interest was shaped by one summer night some twenty-five years ago.