The night

December 20, 2010

Magical. Romantic. Dreamlike.  

Walking through the forest with thick ferns, trees, and moss surrounding me.  In the dark.  Late at night when everyone has gone to sleep, I’m out here in the woods surrounded by thousands of beautiful, glowing lights.

Well, they aren’t really lights.  They are worms or maggots, rather.

My last entry I expounded on my new least favorite insect.  But tonight I was introduced to the most lovely insect: the glow worm.

All right I’ll back up.  Ever since I moved to Fox Glacier I’ve been hearing about glow worms.  A simple walking path right out of town is known as a spot to see them.  I’ve walked it during the daytime and been enthralled by the beauty of the rainforest.   And my friends and I have talked about going out at night to see them.  But we’ve been putting it off because it doesn’t get dark until very late here.  It took out of town guests to get us out in the forest to admire the glow worms.

Jessica had a phone call out of the blue from some friends she worked with earlier in her trip here in New Zealand.  They were in town and so they came over to our place for dinner.  Jessica and her friends decided it would be fun to go out and see the glow worms and invited me along.  

So we stayed up late and ventured out with our flashlights around 11 PM.  First we went up by our house where Chris said we could see them.  They were quite amazing and pretty similar to what I had imagined they would be like.  

Glow worms glow green.  Some are a paler color and look white, but the majority are green.  We decided to also check out the Minehaha trail on the other side of town. This path is a narrower path. At times when you look up you can only just barely see the sky because the path is covered by ferns and trees.  Here the glow worms were intense.  There would be numerous ones clustered together.  We were literally walking through the forest at night surrounded by green glowing worms!  There will be areas that just look like walls covered in glow worms.  Or you’ll look out into the dark of the forest and see glow worms glowing far away.  And they are beautiful.  

I felt like I was in a Disney movie and I was walking through a magical forest.  It almost looks like little green eyes are staring out at you from the forest!  What an experience!  How beautiful!  How amazing that these little maggots glow in the dark!  It kind of plays with my mind.  How can something so gross be so beautiful?