Glowworms.

Some time ago, Stina came back from an evening with friends full of stories about glowworms. She'd walked out to see them north of town, and had absolutely loved the experience. I'd heard that they live around here, but hadn't known where to find them; so I asked if she'd be going again, and could I come next time? She immediately invited me and any other interested parties.

"Next time" turned out to be yesterday. At about six in the afternoon -- I'd call it evening, but so far south with summer rising, the sun isn't setting til 7:30 and it's not dark til ten -- she, Katy, Jules, and I left the flat to walk out Malvern Road, following the Leith upstream. We detoured by the park and by Tim's flat to gather him and Jake. The sun set as we rambled up the quiet road and stopped at a deserted playground to get in touch with our inner children. (Yep, swingsets are still fun!) It was about a half-hour's walk to the trailhead: by the time we got there, the dark was gathering under the trees and the sky had turned that luminous twilight blue. Five minutes up the trail and we broke out our headlamps; another minute and it turned from jeep road to narrow track, clinging to the foot of a rock face; another minute and we jumped a little creek and were there.

In the quickly fading light it was hard to judge the landscape precisely, but the spot was pretty evidently at the bottom of a ravine. Rocky, fern- and moss-draped walls rose several meters on either side of a boulder-strewn streambed. We fumbled our way up the creek a bit -- Jules, Jake, and I stopped on a large boulder close in, while Tim, Katie, and Stina went farther up -- sat down, and turned out all our lights.

The glowworms had actually been slightly visible since we stepped into the ravine -- a few faint, scattered points of light near the rim of the vale. When we doused our torches, though, the dark settled comfortably in and on the black silhouettes of the high creek-banks a galaxy gradually glimmered into existence. Each glowworm was a lit pinprick, a faint fuzzy star. Too soft to bring into focus, the little lights were also so dim that they vanished when I looked directly at them, reappearing once I moved my gaze ever so slightly to the side. Different-sized lights gave an illusion of depth. As the dusk faded into twilight, the fragments of blue between the black canopy overhead deepened and it became ever easier to imagine a Milky Way thrown over the ravine walls.

So Jules and Jake and I sat and watched the stars come out. We talked of light and science, food and company, friends and more food. (We hadn't eaten yet. The single granola bar I'd brought vanished in very short order.) All the while we admired the tiny, ethereal glimmers of the glowwworms' lures.

It took a long while for our numb posteriors, rumbling stomachs, and the settling chill to overcome the glowworms' beauty. When they eventually did, the group trekked back down the road to find a clear night full of real stars, with a crescent moon bright enough to throw long shadows and highlight its dark curve. We hiked most of the way back, turning off still on the side road to visit another friend. He had walked part of the way up with us, from Woodhaugh Gardens to his place, and invited us over for a bonfire after our hike. Now we turned up at his place to accept.

His is another scruffy but loved surfers' flat, with a rather nice garden to boot. At the back of the yard, so near the riverbank that I nearly fell in once, is a stone campfire-ring. Here we built a blaze of newspaper and kindling, lit it with a brand brought in a hurry from the gas stove (rolled-up newspaper makes a rather nerve-wracking match), and fed it with chunks of slow-burning blue gum (which smelled like eucalypt and has a name prone to "bubble gum" jokes).

Conversation, lively at first, gradually petered out. Companionable silence and the Leith's laughter: we sat together warming our hands and feet. The flames hypnotised us... I didn't realise it was nearly eleven until someone else asked. It took a while to tear ourselves away from warmth and good company, in any case.