Last week we spent some time near Des Moines, Iowa. In that area of the country, as the sun begins to set in the evening, sidewalks, grassy areas, and fields take on a mystical, almost magical allure as they light up with thousands of fireflies. They are always a pleasant surprise for us as we do not have these where we live in western Oregon.
The first time I saw them the other evening I called my wife from the house of our kind hosts: “Honey, you’ve got to come out here on the deck …!” “The fireflies are here?” She guessed as she quickly made her way to the deck with her camera. It was an event. She sat there for about an hour taking pictures and movie clips of the fireflies which she sent to our son and her friends. As she was doing so, someone came to visit. “I just LOVE the fireflies?” she exclaimed to which the response was, “Oh, are they out?”,It seemed that everybody passed by without paying any attention to this wonderful phenomena. For the people of the area who were used to them, it was as if nothing happened, but for us it was a special event and local attraction. It is probably the same the other way around. When my father visited me from France six years ago, he marveled at the tall fir, pine, and cedar trees that we have on our region. He was more used to smaller trees as we found in most of the Midwest and the East Coast. For him these tall trees were a special area attraction. As human beings, whether it be concerning the wonderful people or the wonders of nature around us, we have a tendency to become familiar with our immediate surroundings, to the point of seeming to walk with our eyes closed. Maybe that’s why they say that ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder!’ I am also reminded of a time when a group of visitors at a summer resort had watched the sunset from the gallery of their hotel. An overweight, unromantic-looking man had lingered until the last glow faded, & had seemed thrilled through & through by the beauty of it all. One guest, more observant than the rest, wondered about this, & so at supper she said to this man, who sat next to her, "You certainly did enjoy that sunset, Mr. B. Are you an artist?" "No, Madam, I'm a plumber," he responded with a slow grin. "But I was blind for five years.
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