Culture
Night Magic with Leigh Ann Henion
In this episode of Nature Guys, host Bob interviews New York Times best-selling author Leigh Ann Henion about her captivating book, 'Night Magic.' They explore the beauty and significance of...
Night Magic with Leigh Ann Henion
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
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Welcome to Nature Guys, the podcast that connects you to the exciting natural world right
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in your own neighborhood.
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I'm Bob a longtime nature lover, and recently I had the chance to chat with Leigh Ann Hennian,
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a New York Times best-selling nature writer about her wonderful new book, Night Magic.
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Leigh Ann Hennian, welcome to Nature Guys.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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Well, it's great to have you.
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Your book is wonderful.
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I think darkness is something that we don't really talk about enough and why the implications
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or why we're kind of hesitant to be in the dark opens up a whole lot of discussion.
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You probably remember you opened the book in the preface with the story of a boy that's
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lost in the woods, and I wonder if you would share that story.
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Sure.
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It's surprising how little we talk about darkness.
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I mean, that's one of the things I kept coming back to when I was working on the book.
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It's like a camp we've never thought about this, talked about it, researched it.
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But so the story that I start out with is just one of those things that kind of lodges
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in your memory to the story that I'd heard.
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It was a story about a little boy who had gotten lost in the woods.
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When the search and rescue team went out looking for him, the person who found the boy, they
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didn't.
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You'd think they just just was come away and take him to the ambulance waiting somewhere
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or some golden.
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But instead of moving so quickly, the person who found the boy sat down with them and asked
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the boy to describe what he had heard and seen and felt and experienced.
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I think he'd been lost for a couple of nights.
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We asked him to explain what had happened in those nights that he had spent in the woods
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in the dark by himself, terrified.
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Because he thought, well, if this child leaves right now and we just was come away, he's
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going to always be haunted by this.
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But if I spend time with him and we just talk about what he experienced and I can explain
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what he was feeling, like what kind of like insect that might have been or what he was
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hearing, what kind of bird or mammal that might have been, that it would really help him
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kind of understand what he'd been experiencing so they wouldn't have to spend the rest of
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his life being afraid of what had happened there and wondering.
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And so in the end, I think in a way I started the projects like the child and hopefully
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in the end, I've become a little bit of a guide.
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It really struck me and I just kept coming back to that story because I think that very
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few of us have an experience of being introduced to darkness as something to not fear and just
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as a natural state.
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So yeah, I really appreciated that story and so that's kind of why I chose to start out
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with it because in the end, I kind of recognized I was both the child and the guide.
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That story was like two paragraphs long, but it really hit me.
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The chances of that kid running into like the perfect person to rescue him, you can turn
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an experience from a very bad experience that would traumatize your life to something
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that you really look back on with awe and wonder.
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That was a wonderful start to the book.
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I actually have another one of your books here.
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You have written two books, is that right?
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That's right.
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So the first book is a little bit different than the second book.
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Phenomenal, right?
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A hesitant adventurers search for wonder in the natural world where you go out and about
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really far away from home looking at all these amazing things.
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But then in this book, and this is what I really love about the book, you really focus on
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what do we have right in our own neighborhood.
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And that's really what our podcast nature guys is all about.
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So this was an absolute perfect fit for us.
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I love that you broke the book into chapters and started in spring, summer, fall, and
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great names for your chapters.
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I thought fireflies blinking and salamander migrating, owls nesting, glowworm squirming,
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moths transforming, bats flying, box fire glowing, moon gardens blooming, and human surviving.
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I think it's a great book for people who want to pick it up, you know, like chapter by
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chapter over the course of a year, I think works beautifully.
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We can't cover everything in the book, obviously.
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There are some things that people might not recognize.
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And one of them are glowworms.
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Do you want to talk a little bit from that chapter about what glowworms are?
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Sure.
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I'd love to.
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And you know, in a way, I feel like my first book was really training to training me to
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write night magic.
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Because you know, in the first book, I was writing about globally famous phenomenon.
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And in the second book, I am writing about things so close to home.
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Night magic was a really challenging book to write in a way.
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And you know, friends, why are you having so much trouble writing that?
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You know, it seems like, you know, you're like the first book would have been just as
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hard or maybe harder because you had all these experiences.
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But I said, you know, in the first book, I was writing about the Northern Lights and
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the Great Migration of Serengeti.
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And I was like, my aim is for readers to feel that level of awe when I am writing about
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a drainage ditch or a parking lot.
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Yeah.
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So hopefully I achieved that.
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And I love that you noticed the chapter headers.
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You know, I think we think of darkness as a dead end state, a dearth of life.
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And so I really wanted those to have a lot of activity and you know, give a sense of all
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the life that's out there and all the activity that's happening in the dark.
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So starting out, I didn't really know about glorums.
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I didn't think about glorums too much.
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But I did have watched in my mind famously people go to New Zealand to see these neon blue
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glow worms.
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And I've always thought, oh, I would love to go to New Zealand to see these glow worms.
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You can go into caves and they're everywhere.
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You can walk in in forests and they're all over the forest floor.
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So it wasn't until I started working on the book that I learned that neon blue glow
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worms.
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They really exist only very few places on earth and one of the places that there are
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populations of neon blue glow worms.
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I type of fungus, not larvae is in southern Appalachia.
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So my home region, glow worms can be a lot of things and a lot of parts of the world.
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If people call glow worms different things, even even in a certain area, some people call
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far-fly larvae glow worms.
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But these are the glow worms that I talk about in the book and the glorums that are in
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the title of the book are neon blue species of fungus, not larvae, cousin to the glorums
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in New Zealand.
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I love that the glow worms is specifically because this is a species that I was ready to
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travel around the world to find, to experience, only to discover that they had been with me
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the entire time.
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Because not only did I find them in my home region, not only did I find that grandfather
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mountain, which is a tourist, famous tourist attraction, just counting over for me, which
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they only recently discovered.
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They have one of the largest known populations of this species that's known.
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I ended up spoiler alert finding them in my own neighborhood at a spot that I had driven
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by with my headlights on for over 20 years.
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So I had never walked that road in complete darkness without a flashlight.
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I had never walked that road with my eyes adjusted.
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And with, you know, intense to carefully study a road embankment, which is where I ended
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up often finding these glorums, which look like stars scattered on the forest for.
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They are just beautiful.
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Yeah, that is amazing.
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And I guess that leads into eyes adjusting.
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A lot of people realize that when you go out at night in the dark for, you know, it takes
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a few minutes, I think people think for you to really be able to see in the dark or
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perceive things.
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There's more to it than that, isn't there?
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Yeah, this is actually one of the things that just blew my mind.
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I mean, over and over again, it was like, how have I never thought about this before?
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Consider that.
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I think generally when I talk to people, people say, you know, probably our night vision,
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we probably 20, 20 to 30 minutes and we have night vision, which is true.
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We gain the most night vision pretty early on, but I was shocked to learn that you continually
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gain night vision and criminally for hours.
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So to recognize how seldom I have, you know, been in situations where I have not encountered
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artificial lights at all, it's like realizing that you have superpowers that you didn't
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know about.
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If you've never pointedly set out to ripen your night vision, you probably have powers
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you don't know about.
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And that's just really, it's pretty, it's pretty wild.
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It is amazing.
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It is so rare, unfortunately, today to be able to get into darkness.
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A number of years ago, I was working on a project where we were leading cave tours in
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Ohio at a little place called Seven Caves, which interestingly enough, you'll appreciate
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this.
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Seven Caves is kind of like grandfather mountain was a touristy attraction.
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Way back in the 20s and 30s and to attract tourists back then, you know, electricity
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was brand new.
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So it was like a big thing.
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So this guy who owned the caves, the property in the caves, decided he would put electric
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lights in all the caves.
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It was a novelty and a huge thing to people back then, but slowly but surely over time,
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having electric lights in caves was not a particularly big deal to people, which was
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fortunate for this sanctuary that I was working with because they were able to acquire
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these caves.
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And the first thing that they did was tear out all the lights and then we would lead
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as a beautiful area in southern Ohio.
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Very much, it's actually the foothills of the Appalachians, northern edge and it's absolutely
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gorgeous.
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But the caves were amazing and there was one cave that is very big and we used to go
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back into that cave.
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We had these old style lanterns that one of our volunteers made, the kind that they used
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to carry back in the day with the candles on them.
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So we would light the candle and go back into the cave so that the light was just enough
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really basically for people to feel comfortable and they could see.
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This was right before White Nose fungus took off with bats, which is another thing, another
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chapter in your book that you talk about.
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But they were going to, at the end of this season, close the caves because they were worried
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about this White Nose fungus.
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So I was leading my very last hike there and it was a group of people who were wonderful.
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We had this great time and at the very end we went into this big cave and they said,
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can we blow out the candle and just experience the darkness?
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It was amazing.
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We probably just touched the surface because I'm guessing maybe I don't know, 10 minutes
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or so.
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So it would have been amazing really after reading your book or thinking, wow, what if
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I was in there for like two hours?
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What would the experience have been like?
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But in today's world, what do we have everywhere?
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You talked about that in your book, security lights?
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You want to talk a little bit about why are there so many security lights and what they
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might be trying to accomplish?
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Yeah, so electrification is really so recent in the human story.
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But truly just a couple generations.
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It's so interesting talking about the caves and the lighting of caves.
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This idea of really very recently lighting was the luxury.
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Electrification was a luxury and now we've entered a time where darkness is the luxury.
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It is the rarity.
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It's really something I think that has escaped attention somehow, but I think it's coming
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more to consciousness as lighting and artificial light and light pollution continues to grow.
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I think that it's people are becoming more aware of it, but security lights.
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Night magic is really, there's a personal journey to appreciate darkness and an age of
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increasing light pollution really.
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I had it early on, the sapiphany, thanks to a bobcat.
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I did have this close encounter with a bobcat and I had this first instinct was to make
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my way to my neighbor's security lights.
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You know, found the road and it's like, wait a second, the light will not save me.
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The light is not safety.
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One of the things that I found really shocking because it's just so opposite of what we think
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is darkness as darkness as shelter, kind of darkness as security rather than lighting.
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We just think of light itself somehow as security.
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But after that experience, I did a little research on bobcats.
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Obviously because I'm like, well, you know, how does this close encounter?
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We're living together.
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I wanted to learn a little bit more, but something that I came across was
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in the natural world, really not just with bobcats, but in general with large mammals,
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predators actually have better hunting ratios on nights of full moons, like nights that have
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more illumination and on darker nights, pray or more able to get away.
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So, so light actually aids predators in the natural world and darkness aids prey.
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Darkness provides an avenue of escape.
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While I was researching the bog doing the fieldwork, I still get nervous in the dark sometimes.
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Well, aren't you scared?
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I'm like, well, yes, I've done this to him.
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But, you know, in addition to learning the sounds and things like that,
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the way in the woods, I started to feel a little differently about darkness.
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And it actually, you know, once I kind of adopted darkness friends, not always foe.
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I really did start to just, it kind of changed the way that I
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interacted with darkness and thought about it and whether I wanted to be under the security light
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or in the dark shadows where I could, you know, could have be, have a little privacy there.
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It just reshaped not only the way that I thought about darkness, but also lighting even,
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you know, it changed the way that I used lighting not only outside of my house,
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but inside of my house, which was, was, you know, kind of a surprise.
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And it took me a while to really absorb that part of the puzzle and to really start
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understanding, you know, you spend a lot of time with salamanders,
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gnawls and moths and watch them react to artificial light.
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And maybe it just can't, I know, I couldn't help but start to
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really absorb that I am also an animal and that this light is affecting me, you know,
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in very visceral ways, which I think is easy to forget when we live through a
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slightly, at night.
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Seems like the more you get out in the country, the more security lights you find these days.
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It's just like people you're right.
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They just seem to be feel like that's a safety feature.
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Yeah, well, the other interesting thing about that is that, you know, where I live and
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a lot of times those security lights are in places where there's no one to see anything.
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Yeah.
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So again, kind of back to this like the light is not the security.
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No, they're, they're just, you know, I mean, it's a complicated one.
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A lot of different people have a lot of different comfort levels, but you know,
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I feel like hopefully just to start thinking about it, I just to start, you know, thinking
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about it in different ways because again, I think that that it's something that we sort of just
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do and we don't really consider all the different aspects of it.
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I thought that I lived in a fairly dark place and I mean, I do, you know, comparatively,
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it's all relative.
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I did specifically focus on Southern Applatch.
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I chose to do that because I feel like it's important that we all have stories
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that help us relate to wherever we are.
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But my dream is that, you know, my story of, I thought I knew this place, but actually only
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knew half of it because I only knew the daylight half.
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One's fire people to just wherever you are, they're amazing things and they're probably
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little different than where I am.
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But, you know, there will be wonders if you sit and wait and watch and experience darkness.
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This other half of nature will be revealed to you wherever you are.
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But I thought I lived in a dark place.
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I started traveling throughout Southern Applatch.
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To really to find some guides and to figure out how to relate to darkness in a sense.
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And so I would come home and I'd think, oh my goodness, you know, I just left this incredibly
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dark area and I came back and it's like, well, I can see sky glow from the nearer tone.
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You know, I actually need to go into the woods to get night shade, which I've never considered.
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Shade being important in the night for increased darkness.
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All these different different things started happening.
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And I have actually, you can find light pollution maps.
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There aren't tons, but you can, I have seen maps of the specific spot where I live.
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And it traces, you know, over 10 years you can watch.
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And I've seen on these maps where light, five years, 10 years, how it is encroaching
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on my neighborhood.
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And it's really astounding, you know, because again, this lived experience,
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we it's hard to to recognize that sometimes year to year because it's this slow encroachment of light.
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But to watch it on a map, it really is like it's coming, it's coming for you, you know.
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I guess let's touch maybe on one thing.
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I know that you ran into a guy by the name of Jim McCormick.
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He's a naturalist and he's actually from Arneck of the Woods.
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And I had him on my show last year because he wrote a book on moss.
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He was talking about the importance of moss, you know, we love butterflies because we see them in
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the daylight and they are no doubt beautiful.
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But there are many, many more species of moss, some of which are also very beautiful.
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And one might argue they're all beautiful.
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When I was a kid, we would turn on the porch light and moss would just like come in,
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there'd be like hundreds of moss swarming these things.
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And now there are not as many.
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But Jim McCormick is just, he's a fantastic naturalist.
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I've heard him speak a number of times.
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One of the things he says in his book that really hit me is,
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why does it always have to be about us?
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Can't we just let some of these things exist and flourish because they are living beings?
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And I think the night, maybe what you touch on in the book and I think it's really true.
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The nighttime gives you an appreciation for that.
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You know, we get overloaded, I think, with visuals, you know.
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And in the daytime, which are wonderful.
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But the nighttime takes away some of that.
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And then you get to really become more aware of your hearing and your senses smell.
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All these other things come into play.
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It's really very, very beautiful.
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And I think for people who want to try this, you know, you don't have to go, you know,
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endanger your life to, you know, to tooth this.
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You can find a, you know, a safe place, right?
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Maybe even in your own backyard or neighborhood where you can go out and experience these things.
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And find, as you said, maybe you're going to run into some amazing things right in your own
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neighborhood like glow war.
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Yes. And Jim is wonderful.
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I learned so much about Maude's from Jim.
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Most of the language we have about darkness talks about darkness as shrouding things,
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as hiding things.
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And so, you know, the night magic was actually inspired by a fireplace.
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It's not this experience with synchronous fireplace.
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I wrote a magazine piece.
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And, you know, one of the things about that experience was this concept that darkness reveals things.
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Without darkness, you can't appreciate fireplace, right?
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So this idea that darkness reveals, it doesn't always shroud.
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And, you know, light pollution is a form of pollution.
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But one of the most amazing things about it is that this is a form of pollution.
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That can be addressed pretty much immediately.
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And it means darkness floods back in and reveals things unexpected.
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And yes, you don't have to go, you don't have to come to Southern Appalachia,
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you don't have to go to New Zealand.
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You know, I really think that sometimes tell people, if you have never turned out the lights in your
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yard, you know, maybe even invite your neighbors to turn their lights out.
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Have a little neighborhood gathering and just pointedly experience night in that as dark as you can have it.
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I, you know, things will be revealed.
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You'll hear things, you will see things, you will experience things that you probably
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you know, didn't expect.
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And, you know, one of the reasons that the book came about is because after that
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fireplace article, you know, I had readers reaching out to me saying that they
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read my story and it had inspired them to turn off their own works lights.
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And I that just blew my mind.
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I was amazed that a story had inspired someone to change a habit, take an action.
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That was really powerful.
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And so that's one of the reasons that I went on my night magic journey,
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monglow worms and moon gardens.
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You know, I met Jim at Martha Paloza, which is a fantastic Martha living festival.
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And truly, I don't know if there is a time in my adult life that I have learned more
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than I learned in at Martha Paloza, you know, it's like, Jim's kind of introducing me to these
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species of moths and it's like, then I just keep seeing them.
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And so then I, you know, he kind of teaches me what these species are.
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And then I'm, you know, meeting other people who are like, what is this?
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And I'm like, oh, I know this one.
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And so it's just this really beautiful community festival connection.
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Everybody's just getting excited about these gorgeous moths.
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And moths really are gorgeous.
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Butterflies get all the cred, but moths are so beautiful and so incredibly diverse.
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Before I wrote my magic, I thought every time I saw a caterpillar, I thought, oh,
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butterfly in waiting.
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When in fact, statistically, almost always, I'm off.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So again, kind of shocking.
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And admittedly, one of the most, I don't know, it's like, I can't believe I didn't know this before,
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but I did not know the woolly worm, which is called woolly bear.
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Some people call them woolly bears.
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So I live where I live, there's actually a festival.
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The woolly worm festival celebrating the woolly worm.
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One of the most famous caterpillars in North America, arguably.
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And again, before I started this journey, I really, I had never thought to consider what the woolly worm
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becomes.
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And the woolly worm becomes an Isabel at Hayama, and I had never seen an Isabel at Hayama,
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until, at pointedly, you know, went looking to learn from moths.
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And it was like, I've been surrounded by a whole year and a half my entire life.
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And I've also been surrounded by Isabel at Hygur's, and I didn't even know.
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So again, it's kind of that, but, you know, I've only known half of this, of this landscape that I
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thought I knew so well. And mothapalooza is just an absolute last.
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And I really do.
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It jem is just so knowledgeable and really just so fun in the field.
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So I just really appreciate the time that I was able to spend a lot of the loser.
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Yeah, that was cool.
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And actually mothapalooza is in the arch of Appalachia, which is where seven caves are,
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where I was part of.
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So that's all connected.
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Fantastic.
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Yeah, I love it.
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Because, you know, one of the things that's great about, because mothsing, which is,
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you know, it's like the moth-loving version of birding.
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And mothers call themselves mothers, like birds, or self-fers.
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But, you know, one of the things about that is like, again, back to darkness,
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as a dearth of life, darkness, as this dead-and-state, when in fact, you know,
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you have this experience of watching all of this biodiversity, all of these gorgeous patterns
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and shapes and colors, just, you know, stream out of darkness.
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It's such a powerful experience.
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And, you know, once you have that experience, you can start to think about darkness in a different
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way, I think, and darkness as something to be preserved, you know, as habitats.
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Also, you know, we, butterflies, or popular bees or beloved moths are incredibly important
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as an external pollinator.
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So, again, and light disrupts, light disrupts life cycles of moths, really pretty much every
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living creature on earth.
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So, it's very important to preserve that darkness as habitat.
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We don't often think of it like that, but native plants are important.
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And so is darkness as habitat and also, you know, avenues of migration.
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I expect, you know, all the songbirds that we have that migrate, you know, they're able to visit
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via dark corridors, artificial lights, a cinzema course.
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It's very disruptive to so many different animals and so many different behaviors and patterns.
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Yeah, it absolutely is.
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And I think you're right.
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The first step maybe is to get out there and experience for yourself and appreciate it.
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And then you start to see these connections with, I think, you said in the book, something like 80%
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of songbirds migrate at night.
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And, birders get excited about this because they get to see a lot of these birds,
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because these birds kind of drop out and hang out for a while during the daytime,
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which is perfect for birders.
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And then they, you know, they fly at night.
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But yeah, the messing up of their flyways is just one implication.
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The insects are another one that we touched on.
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It's just one thing after another.
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I really like your point about, you know, there's a, it gets a little depressing sometimes when you
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think about the natural world.
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And when you start to get connected, I think you do kind of go through what a
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naturalist friend of mine calls a wall of grief where you just think, oh my gosh, you know, what can,
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what can I, what can one person do?
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Well, you're right.
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If you just go out and turn off the light bulb on your back porch, you've done something, you know,
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and it's immediate, you know, so it's really, it's empowering to be able to, you know,
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affect some change.
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And I think, yeah, you should really be proud of the fact that people are,
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are reading your book and then actually acting on, on, on what they learn from it.
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You know, the synchronous fireflies are totally cool.
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We were actually just in the smokies.
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Um, last week I would admit, this is a daylight activity.
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I'm sorry.
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I love sunlight as well.
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I do too.
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So we were there for the wildflowers and the synchronous fireflies I've known about for a long
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time because it's become a big deal.
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In fact, it's such a big deal that now you have to go to a lottery kind of system to go down.
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So anyway, a few years back, my wife got to be in her bonnet about fly fishing.
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She really wanted to learn to fly fish.
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We went to fly fishing school.
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We had this wonderful guide who taught us a lot about fly fishing, but also knew a lot about
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the natural world.
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And I said, well, we've been trying to get into this synchronous firefly program.
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He says, well, you realize that they're not just at Elkmont, don't you?
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And you know, it's like, people kind of think that, oh, you know, it's like, it's like
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Kings Island or whatever.
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You have to go to the amusement park and the amusement park is just one part, right?
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Right.
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And then it's nowhere else.
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Well, yeah, I mean, I went to Martha, Blizzard, right?
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I traveled, you know, traveled to Ohio.
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And I'm like, well, you know, in obviously, like one of the most interesting things that happened
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is like, you know, I would go and I would try to find people to help me.
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How do you have a close encounter with the law at the Salamander?
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You know, I'm just like, I don't know how to get started here.
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So I went seeking these guides.
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And like, ultimately, I often ended up finding what I was looking for in my own backyard,
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in my own neighborhood.
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But the reality is we not only know how to have these encounters with responsibly,
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with animals, but also just to figure out how to relate to darkness.
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We, you know, it's just incredibly challenging.
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We as a culture, you know, like as a generationally, like just in the speed of a few generations,
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we really don't know how to interact with the darkness.
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Then back to the empowering part of inviting darkness back.
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I mean, when you start loving darkness, then the fluxet is you start
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grieving darkness because you start recognizing how much has been lost in this time
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when we really stop, could of pin your attention to darkness and having an intimate relationship
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with darkness as it is directly around us.
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A lot of times when people talk about layplushin, they're mourning the loss of stars, right?
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We can't see the stars in our eyes.
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What I started realizing is that not only can we not see the stars,
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we have lost the ability to see and experience what is directly around us in the dark.
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You can have this immediate effect by turning off our own lights, by inspiring, you know,
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our neighbors to turn off their lights to start looking at our communities and where people
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are using lighting. I mean, truly before I went on this journey, I would just drive around my town
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and just I would never have no, oh, look at those security lights and a parking lot that no one is in.
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You know, I just didn't register to me that these were things to pay attention to.
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You know, one of my neighbors, actually when I first started working on the book, she came over
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and she said, oh, I'm so glad you're working on this. And because she has a neighbor down the road
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who had just put up a new security light. And she's like, I moved to the country because I wanted
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the darkness and now I have the security lights, you know, just beaming into my living room.
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And I've had to click these curtains up and I'm just, I don't know how to talk to them about this.
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And I thought, okay, I need to write a book that Kristen can just slip into that guy's mailbox.
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I want to write a book that makes it not an adversarial thing, but more of an invitation.
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And I actually told that story on at a book event one time and people came up afterwards and
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they were like, okay, we have two copies. One is for us, so I'm going to tie it to us. And then on
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this one, will you please just make it out too dawn? Turn out your lights.
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Oh my gosh, they're going to slip this in his mailbox and their name's not on it, but mine is.
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That's right. There's all kinds of things that neighbors do to each other. We as nature loving people,
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we get invaded by. We get invaded by chemicals and we get invaded by light. A lot of times,
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it's people don't realize, you know, oh, the light is not a good thing. Maybe it would be good.
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If you do it in the right way, you can maybe influence people. We have now a lot more
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fireflies in our backyard in Woods area than really anybody else on our street does.
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Part of it is you're right. We can see them because we don't have lights on back there and it's
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somewhat the trees somewhat screen out the light. But boy, I would love it. You know, we've got
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street lights on our street. My gosh, we have these things we drive around called cars. They've
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got giant lights on them. I mean, do you really need a street light to find the road?
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It's really a challenge. I mean, and it is. It's so hard and there's so much to mourn. It feels like
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kind of a constant assault. It's hard to know where to start. But thinking back to when people
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reached out to me after they read that firefly story and to think that it had inspired them to
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take an action, I kind of started thinking, you know, okay, they did not turn those lights out
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because I said light pollution is harmful. Light pollution is bad. Light pollution is taking
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all of this away from you. I think that they were turning out those lights because they just never
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considered that if they didn't turn out those lights that they might miss out on something. So
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it's really light. They just got curious throughout my journey as I was writing the book. I really
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tried to focus not on what light pollution is taking away, but rather on what darkness has to offer.
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Because I think that is something that that's a story that we just have missed out on. I still can't
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believe that this is one of the first books of its kind. I mean, but we do not have a lot of stories
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that tell us or show us why it might be important to value darkness. That darkness is a gift, you know,
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absolutely. That is very well said. I'd like to end up if it's okay with you for you to just read
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a passage. Your last your last chapter is called human surviving. Yes, my last species humans.
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And at the very last part of it on page 293, there are a couple paragraphs there that start from
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the cycles of light and dark. Would you read that? I'd love to. Sure. Thank you.
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From the cycles of light and dark, none of us can be parsed out completely. On and on, we all
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together keep bringing this world into being. Night follows day, spring follows winter. How fortunate
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I am to be among the humans who witnessed this shape shifting, this perpetual blinking. I hope
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I am not among the last. We craft the world bold by bold, seed by seed. And we'll know we're on
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our way to wellness when stars begin to once again reveal themselves. Maybe learn to love darkness
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as our ancestors learn to love light so that we might play a role in nature's reliable cycling.
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Maybe we begin to recognize that just as we tend to light up, we can tend them down, revealing
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wonders that are in daylight unimaginable. Maybe we find our way back to natural darkness or at
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least hold fast to the wilderness that still exists so that we'll be able to bear witness tonight's
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living riches. May we as a species relearn how to blink, letting both night and day have their
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space. Because it is only about the power of light and the grace of darkness that we're able to
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rest and rise, then rest and rise again. That's the beauty, that's the blinking. That is just so beautiful.
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Oh, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. Thanks so much for for fostering so
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much wonderful conversation about the natural world. It's so needed and important. Well, thank you.
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Take care. You too. I hope you get a chance to read Night Magic. I am confident it will inspire you
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as it inspired me to explore the marvels of the dark. Until next time, this is Bob for Nature Guys,
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hoping as always that you will take the time to step outside and stay awhile. Take care, everyone.
Topics Covered
Nature Guys podcast
Leigh Ann Hennian
Night Magic book
darkness in nature
experiencing darkness
glowworms
night vision
natural world exploration
neighborhood nature
light pollution awareness
personal journey in nature
seasonal nature activities
bats and white nose fungus
storytelling in nature
child lost in woods
connecting with nature