An Encounter with Fairies
If you’d like to hear me tell An Encounter with Fairies, visit Drive With Us Podcast.
Back in 1998, I went backpacking through Europe. As with many backpackers traveling without an itinerary, I found myself staying (by the luck of the gods) in a decent hostel in Italy, and traveling, while only briefly, with a lovely duo from Canada, Barbara and Heidi and a nice fellow they’d met from New New Zealand named George.
One evening after spending the day hiking around Genoa, we decided to investigate the castle-like ruins at the top of a nearby hill.
We left the hostel an hour or so before dusk, a cheap bottle of champagne sloshing in our bellies. The warm June evening greeted us with a soft breeze as we ascended the hill. The castle turned out to be a ruined fort that was mostly fenced off. One dark detached hallway still stood. By then the sun had sunk enough that no light illuminated the dark passageway. A few dares were thrown around, but none of us were brave enough to go inside.
We hiked a little further and took in the view of the glowing city below. As a night chill set it, we headed back down the hill taking a wooded path instead of the road.
As we walked, fallen leave crunching under our feet, I began to see flashes of light in the trees. I stopped, searching for someone attempting to light a cigarette, but having trouble with their lighter. But as soon as I stopped and looked in earnest, the sparks stopped and I could see no one in the darkness. Confused, I continued on, only to see the flashes again out of the corner of my eye.
Perplexed, I stopped and waited. Then, like magic, a flash appeared inches from my face. Then another and another until the air was filled with floating lights.
“Fireflies!” Barbara called.
Coming from California, I had never seen a lightning bug in person before. These tiny luminescent insects were the thing of children’s books and movies where kids caught them in jars to have at their bedside.
Here I was, 21 years old, and seeing them for the first time. I reached out and closed my cupped hands around a glowing dot. When I opened my hands, I found a tiny bug clinging to my palm, its rear end lighting periodically in an iridescent green glow.
I brought it close to my face and it took flight again, and, like millions before me, over thousands of years, I had just encountered magic. I knew where fairies came from.
