So we're honored to welcome Leanne Henyon to the 47th Annual Darwin Festival at
Salem, Salem State University.
Leanne writes about the importance of experiencing nature and the awe and
wonder that it can instill in us.
Her works include books the books Phenomenal, A Hesitant Adventure,
Search for Wonder in the Natural World, and Night Magic Adventures among Glow
Worms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark.
Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Smithsonian, Backpacker,
and National Geographic, among others.
She's a winner of a Lowell Thomas Award, which recognizes excellence in travel
journalism, and her work has been supported by and
Alicia Patterson Fellowship and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation.
Leanne's Darwin Festival talk is sponsored by the SSU Biology Department,
the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Charles Albert Reed Trust,
an award from the City of Salem with a long standing tradition of supporting the
Darwin Festival.
Leanne's talk today is about appreciating the magic of natural night,
and I'll turn it over to Leanne.
Hi, thanks so much for having me today.
I'm excited to be part of this event.
So my Buck night magic was actually inspired by a story that I wrote for The
Washington Post Magazine about synchronous fireflies.
So before I started this process, before I wrote that story,
I didn't realize that there were hundreds of species of fireflies.
I just thought fireflies, you know, or fireflies.
But as it turns out, fireflies are incredibly diverse and
synchronous.
Fireflies are one of the most famous species of fireflies because in Great
Smoky Mountains National Park there is an event held there annually to see these
fireflies.
10s of thousands of people actually applied to go and see these fireflies
because as their name indicates, they they are synchronous blinkers.
So before I got this assignment, I thought that that meant these fireflies
were like on, off, on, off.
But what actually happens is when you have a population of synchronous
fireflies in a forest, you'll see a little bit of a twinkling,
a little twinkling, and then all of a sudden you'll see a
whoosh of lights go across the forest floor,
and then it'll whoosh in the other direction.
It's fantastic.
It's like a living version of the Northern Lights on the forest floor.
So that was fantastic.
And I was incredibly moved by witnessing this phenomena.
But one of the things that was really surprising for me was in order to see
these fireflies, I did attend the event in Great Smoky
Mountains National Park.
And I was, you know, out there with groups of hundreds of
people.
And we were kind of shuffling around and, like,
trying not to bump into each other because in order to see these fireflies,
you can't have a flashlight.
You can't look at your phone.
You have to have complete darkness.
And I realized that I had not ever really spent time in the dark like that.
So I found it to be really restorative.
You know, I spend so much of my time on computer,
on phone, on tablets, just exposed to so much artificial lights.
You know, at, at midnight, my living room was at that time like,
you know, it's like high noon with the lights on.
And so I realized that I just had not ever spent time in the dark,
really waking time in the dark because, you know, in the electrified world,
we think lights off go to sleep, lights on wake up.
But in nature, there's an easing Into Darkness and an
easing into light.
And so I really appreciated that experience.
And I learned from Fireflies about how harmful artificial light can be for every
cycle.
Every part of their life cycle can be disrupted by exposure to artificial light.
And spoiler alert, artificial light is harmful for pretty
much every life form on earth.
So after this article ran, it was the article.
It was a story of my experience.
I had people from all over the country started emailing me.
Like people took time to figure out how to contact me.
And they would say, you know, love that Firefly story.
And it inspired me to turn off my porch lights more often.
And that's the part that I found really shocking because it's really hard to
change a habit.
It's really hard to inspire a direct action.
But I'd written a story that inspired people to start turning off, you know,
going to the switch and turn it off more often.
And I don't think they did it because I told them that light pollution is bad for
wildlife, which it is, or because it's bad for humans,
which it is, contributing to rates of cancer,
mood disorders, the list goes on.
I think that they reached out to me because they got curious about what might
be in their own yard after dark.
And so in in that spirit, I started thinking,
if I learned this much from fireplace, what can I learn from spending time with
owls and salamanders and bats and all of these other creatures that depend on
natural darkness?
So the book really is my personal journey to appreciate natural darkness in an age
of increasing artificial light.
And after my time with the fireflies, I thought, OK,
what species might be good to look into next?
And I decided that I was going to find a way to observe the spotted salamander
migration.
So every year, every spring, salamanders make their way from their
homes underground, where they spend their entire lives,
where we really don't know much about what they do underground.
But every year for just a couple of weeks at night,
they come out and they make their way to ephemeral pools.
So they're also known as vernal pools, but I just like ephemeral.
So they're ephemeral pools because most of the time they do not exist.
So only in spring with snow melt and spring rains are these pools formed.
There's like always the indention there, but the water fills.
And so these are pools where fish have not been able to establish populations.
So they're really safe places for all these other species to come and procreate,
including spotted salamanders and spring peepers and wood frogs and all of the,
the things that at night, you know, you hear the, the, the night noises of,
of spring, A lot of those noises are coming from
ephemeral pools.
So a tiny ephemeral pool can have more life concentrated there than in acres of
surrounding area because because of this springtime phenomena.
So I was able to find an ephemeral pool really close to my house.
And so ephemeral pools can be found all over the country, all over the world.
I actually looked, looked in in Massachusetts,
Mass Audubon actually has a program where people can can apply to have a ephemeral
pool officially recognized.
Because here's the thing, we really don't know a lot about where
these pools are.
They're, you know, like in, in areas of the neighborhood where people
don't usually go or, you know, up a low lying area of a park where
nobody's really paid attention at night or really, you know,
focused on finding things there.
So I love this idea that you really can be an explorer and discover a new world
without traveling too far at all.
If you're at all interested in a mini quest to help,
to help document and therefore potentially hopefully help preserve
ephemeral pools, I encourage you to look up Mass Audubon
Vernal Pool program.
And you could become an explorer kind of close to home.
But so spotted salamanders in particular go there to lay their eggs.
And one of the interesting things that's in this beautiful photograph by Steven
David Johnson.
So one of the things that that happens is algae blooms in these eggs at a certain
point in a salamander's development.
So that's a the people scientists have known about this for a while.
But what scientists really recently learned is that not only do these
salamanders have algae in their eggs, spotted salamanders actually have algae
in their cells.
These creatures that almost live their entire lives in darkness are known to
photosynthesize.
So it's a really amazing thing that's just been discovered.
And it sort of brings up, you know, if we didn't know this about spotted
salinanders for so long, what else don't we know?
Which is always exciting, that concept of discovery.
So in looking Into Darkness and how to appreciate darkness,
I would have been remiss if I hadn't considered owls.
So I set out and I was hoping to have a interaction with a saw wet owl.
So I live in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
I specifically chose to focus my field work in southern Appalachian because this
is the area that I know best.
And I really wanted this to be a model for anyone who's reading this living in
the desert where, you know, temperate rainforest, wherever you are,
I promise that when the sunsets, there is a parallel universe to be
explored.
And so I thought I knew my homeland really well, but as it turns out,
I only knew half of it.
I only knew the daylight half.
So there was this whole nocturnal half that I was unfamiliar with,
but I knew that, you know, Sawit owls live on high,
high elevation mountains.
And I was thinking how could I have this meaningful encounter?
Meanwhile, some friends of mine who live in downtown
Boone, NC, I their backyard only has a few trees,
but between houses.
But as I was hoping to have this experience with the Sawit,
my friends actually had a screech owl family nest in one of these trees in in a
downtown area.
And so I ended up spending a good bit of time getting to observe this screech owl
family.
And there are some wild things that if you read the book,
you'll you'll discover this incredible story of a an astronomer who lives in the
neighborhood who's also a birder and a a street light that goes on and has been
turned off after the community sets up an outcry.
But one of the important things that I really learned and and begin to focus on
in that, in that chapter in that process was
darkness is not only important for owls, darkness is incredibly important for
migrating songbirds.
So when you appreciate songbirds in the spring, any time of year,
you're appreciating the darkness that brought them there.
So migrating birds need these dark corridors to travel because vast majority
of of songbirds migrate at night and it's incredibly important for them to have
darkness.
So we often don't think of darkness as habitat, but that's absolutely what it is.
And we're losing it it we're losing it really quickly to artificial light.
But one of the things I learned from this owl family is how important a single tree
can be.
So this remnant woodland habitat, how important a single tree can be,
and also through the story of the the larger story of that neighborhood,
how important just a dark yard can be, a dark neighborhood and how that darkness
can grow in a positive way.
And so I really tried to focus on night magic being a dark positive story.
We do not have a lot of those.
So when we think about darkness and talk about darkness, you know,
we often talk about darkness as a void or darkness as equating to death.
Whereas light is knowledge, illumination, life.
So really try to, you know, play around with that a little bit
because darkness is incredibly important for all forms of life to thrive on Earth.
And we often talk about how we can't see the stars as a negative impact of
artificial light.
And that is true.
It artificial light blocks our view of the night sky.
But over time I really started to understand that not only does artificial
light block our view of the night sky and sever our connection to the cosmos,
it's really come to sever our relationship and our ability to witness
and experience the night world that's directly around us.
So a great example of that, glow worms.
So a lot of people call a lot of different things glow worms.
And actually when I was looking into fireflies,
one of the things that I loved was learning that Firefly larvae glows.
And so when you see fireflies rise in a field and you know, your aunt's yard,
wherever you are, those fireflies have been on the ground
underground for up to two years.
When you see them rise and they've been glowing the whole time,
like these little seeds of light.
And so some people call Firefly larvae, those little seeds of light glow worms.
But when I talk about glow worms, I'm usually referring to a fungus gnat
larvae.
So as someone who's writing about darkness and nocturnal animals,
I find myself often in kind of the role of unexpected PR agent.
And so fungus nut larvae, AKA maggots probably needs some positive
PR because I'm here to say that maggots can be magical.
And I think that, you know, this photo really supports that that
commentary.
So these this, this is an image of fungus nut larvae in
New Zealand.
So New Zealand has populations of neon blue glow worms that millions of people
from around the world traveled to New Zealand to see.
And for years I talked about how much I would love to go to New Zealand to see
these glow worms.
So in New Zealand, you go into a cave and they're just like
all over the ceiling, all around you.
You walk through a forest at night, they're all over the ground.
And so in the process of working on night magic,
I discovered that Southern Appalachia, my home region,
as one of the only other places on earth where neon blue glow worms are known to
exist.
And spoiler alert, I not only found them in a neighboring
county and populations, huge populations are arguably largest
populations known to be in Southern Appalachia.
I ended up finding them in my own neighborhood on a roadside embankment
that I have driven down for 20 years with my music on and my headlights on.
No idea that they were there.
But never before had I taken the time to walk in darkness without a flashlight,
without looking at my phone, to let my eyes adjust and to really
experience what might be there.
And what I found was a roadside that at night is spangled with these brilliant
stars.
So it's a beautiful experience.
I love this idea.
Again, you know, I was willing to travel around the world
to find wondrous glow worms only to discover that they had been living with
me the entire time.
So that's a theme that kind of comes over and over again.
You know, we think we have to go far to explore,
to discover something new that's undescribed.
You know, we think we have to go far to experience
wonder, but often we can find it really close to
home.
And the great thing about about exploring the night world,
which is a parallel universe right outside our door every time the sunsets,
it's it's right there waiting for us.
So in terms of nocturnal creatures.
So if I was in, if I was in a room with you guys,
I would ask, like how many, how many of you love butterflies?
Generally, I find that there are a lot of hands that
raise who loves butterflies doesn't who loves moths.
A lot of times people kind of, oh, the noses crinkle.
It's kind of like, not so sure.
So moths do not get the credit that they deserve.
So here I am, a little bit of a moth PR lady.
So moths, you know, people tend to think of them as drab and,
and you know, they're, they're larvae going to come and eat your
sweaters.
I promise, most species do not want to come and eat
your sweaters.
So moths are incredibly diverse and they're gorgeous.
So they're giants.
They're tiny.
They're colorful, gorgeous patterns.
So when I was growing up, I always thought that when I saw a
Caterpillar, I thought that I was seeing a butterfly
and waiting.
But as it turns out, statistically, when you see a Caterpillar,
you are almost always looking at a moth and waiting.
So this is incredibly important because these moths, these caterpillars,
they are the ones who support bird populations.
So birds look to these caterpillars for food.
Don't fight me on this, but there are some scientists who would
argue that globally, moths are more important pollinators than
bees.
So moths take on an incredible night shift of pollination.
And so the world as we appreciate it in daylight is made possible by moths.
So in order to have a meaningful close encounter, to learn about moths,
I attended an event called Martha Palooza.
And it was just as much fun as it sounds.
So it was a basically a giant moth party, moth balls.
That's another term for the tiny, the tiny parties to appreciate moths.
But so at at Martha Palooza, scientists, moth enthusiasts, people set up.
White sheets with lights that that attract moths, and then on those sheets,
moths have a place to land.
And so in that experience, I was just dazzled by the diversity and
the beauty of moths.
And at Martha Palooza, I kind of learned how to have these
experiences.
When I came home, I set up my own little mothball in my own
yard, and I discovered that I had mods that I
wasn't aware of, you know, living around me.
So woolly worms, otherwise known as woolly bears,
are arguably the most famous Caterpillar in North America.
And there actually is a festival for woolly worms, woolly bears,
really close to where I live.
Huge thousands of people come every year to celebrate the woolly worm,
the woolly bear.
But never before right in night magic had I,
I I realized that never before had I considered what does the woolly bear
become?
And the woolly wear becomes an Isabella Tiger moth hover star of Night Magic.
And so I have had woolly bears, have carried them around.
I've seen them yearly for my entire life, but not until I set out to experience the
Moth world had I ever encountered an Isabella tiger.
But after I did, I realized again, I've been focused on the daylit world.
Had no idea that the entire time I had been surrounded by Willie Bears,
I was also surrounded by Isabella tigers.
Unaware.
So Moz.
Underappreciated, under loved, but beloved by me now and hopefully over
time maybe by you if you look into mods a little bit more closely.
So bats.
Bats might be the nocturnal animal that I spent the most time with that is in term
in need of positive PR.
So admittedly, bats were probably the nocturnal creature
that I was most nervous about.
And so how do you have a responsible and meaningful encounter with a bat?
So my answer to this was to an attend a bat blitz.
So here I just want to say Mata Palooza bat blitz.
If you have a passion for animals, chances are other people have a passion
for these animals and there is a party somewhere for you to attend.
So I encourage you to do that.
So I went to Bat Blitz where I was with bat biologist, just bat loving people.
I went bat neutral.
I went to become bat positive.
I think that that was achieved.
Hopefully that comes across in the book, which is includes adventures in dry
riverbeds and extremely rural Alabama, some wild adventures, but the they're,
they're too much to share in this short talk.
But I do love a quote by one of the bat educators who I spent time with there,
otherwise known as the Bat Lady.
So she told me if you fear something, it probably means that you have something
to learn from it.
And I love that sentiment and I carry it with me.
I think that it applies to bats.
I think that it applies to darkness.
I think that it applies to pretty much everything in life.
So bats.
So after Bat Blitz, I started thinking a lot about foxfire
and bioluminescent fungi.
So Foxfire was the name of this book series.
In the 1970s, I very famously codified Appalachian folk
tradition.
My parents had copies of these books my entire life.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that foxfire means it is is a
term for bioluminescent fungi.
And it wasn't until I was working on the book that I discovered that this isn't
just a particular species.
That's an umbrella term for a myriad of of species that that glow.
So glowing fungi, bioluminescent fungi.
So I set out to find some foxfire, enlisting the help of a naturalist who
leads night hikes, who gave some practical tips about how to
walk around in the dark without lights, including you walk heel, toe, heel, toe,
kind of in a pronounced heel toe motion so they don't trip over roots and things
when you're when you're wandering a trail in the dark.
But so going out with this naturalist, his name is Tal.
So when I went out with Tao, in addition to teaching me how to walk in
the dark, he also taught me a lot about my own
Physiology.
So I set out to, you know, experience and learn from these other
species.
And I ended up learning a lot about human, you know, humans and my own Physiology.
And so a lot of people think that you gain night vision,
need 20-30 minutes to gain night vision.
And that is true.
We gain most of our night vision in the 1st 20 to 30 minutes of being in complete
darkness.
But in reality, we can gain night vision for
incrementally for hours.
So I love telling people if you have never set out pointedly to let your night
vision ripen, then you have powers you don't even know
about.
So when you allow your night vision to ripen,
you're able to really see fox fur in a, in a a much brighter capacity.
You're able to see glow worms that you wouldn't otherwise be able to see.
You know, you can't just go walking and just turn
the flashlight out and immediately be able to see them really well.
You need a little time to let your eyes adjust.
So in this photo, this is this is bitter oyster mushrooms,
which I ended up discovering are pretty prolific where I live.
And again, not only, you know, I, I found them in my own neighborhood again
in in daylight.
The, the left, this is what they look like in daylight.
And then on the right is what they look like in the dark.
So you can have a nondescript twig in daylight and at night it turns into this
absolute magic wand.
It's fantastic.
And again, Foxfire in in the fall is a great time to
look for Foxfire.
And another great thing is, you know, in the different seasons,
there are different things in the night to discover.
So moon gardens, going through the title adventures among
glow worms, moon gardens and other marvels of the
dark.
I set out and I wanted to experience night blooming flowers,
and so when I set out I was looking for tropical flowers,
night blooming cirrus flowers.
I ended up finding night blooming tobacco in a friend's garden.
She had accidentally planted a moon garden.
How do you accidentally plant a moon garden?
Well, she lives in a house, one of the oldest houses in Watauga
County, North Carolina.
And it was a house that was built pre electricity.
So she's the kind of person that, you know,
if she changes a door knob in her house, she wants to, you know,
have a period appropriate door knob.
If she is planting a garden, she wants to plant, plant,
use plants that you know, would have been appropriate for that.
And so she read journals, she did research,
and she ended up planting things that the original inhabitants would have planted.
And that meant that she planted a moon garden because moon gardens,
pre electricity were really a form of entertainment.
They were a place to enjoy evening.
And moon gardens often have white blooms, things that are soft to the touch and it
really is just a sensory delight.
A lot of night blooming flowers have really strong fragrance to,
to attract pollinators and moths.
Another reason that I think moths don't get the credit they deserve and why
people kind of cringe a little bit when it's, you know, do you love moths?
A lot of times when we encounter A moth, we're encountering a moth at a porch
light and this moth is just banging itself against the porch light.
And it's really, you know, it's really being terrorized in a sense,
but it's artificial light, it's confused and it's terror terrorized.
And so when we see this moth acting terrified, we're terrified.
So in at dusk, in natural darkness, in a moon garden,
you can encounter a moth in its natural habitat.
So you think of butterflies, sunlit meadows,
moths in the non artificial light environments of a moon garden are
incredibly serene and a lot of times tobacco primrose,
they attract hot moths just like Hummingbird size moths and they're
fantastic to watch.
So watch a flower respond to darkness is a really powerful experience.
You know, again, we think of flowers, sunlit meadows.
So to see a flower relax and respond to darkness and open and bloom in darkness,
it's really helpful to help absorb the fact that while, you know,
gardening tends to talk about how plants need light to grow,
there's less consideration given to how plants need darkness to thrive.
And so I feel like spending time with, with night blooming flowers really helped
me absorb that.
And I know that plants are photosensitive beings,
but watching a flower respond to darkness again really brings that home.
And it helped me also start to consider how, you know,
all plants are responding to darkness cues.
You know, I live as I, as I think you guys do in a place where
people really flock here in the fall to see the leaves changing, leaf peepers.
You know, it's a vacation.
People want to come and see those leaves changing.
And I've always thought about, you know, the,
the temperature change as associated with that, you know, cooler temperatures, the,
the leaves start to change.
But before this journey, I'd never really considered how darkness
really plays a really important role in that process.
So it's not just the cooling of the nights.
It's the lengthening of these periods of darkness that cue these trees to pull
their energy inward and to to change color, drop the leaves.
There have actually been studies in urban areas where there are St.
lights where trees are not able to have access to natural darkness that it,
they actually, it can shift seasons for for several
weeks.
It can shift seasons several weeks at a time for bud burst and spring for leaf
like leaf change and fall.
So it's really disrupting the, the, the tree's natural cycle.
So how in the end, to explore the human relationship to
darkness and the human relationship to light was a challenge.
I'm still a little bit, it's a little bit interesting to to me
even to think back like how did I come up with this idea?
But I just kept wondering how to explore that relationship.
I ultimately decided that I wanted to trace the human relationship to
artificial light back to its beginnings, and so I decided that I was going to make
light with sticks in my bare hands by learning how to make fire with a bow
drill.
So in human history, our relationship to artificial light has
changed exponentially in just a few generations.
But so tracing back to that first creation of artificial light, fire,
I decided to do that.
And one of the IT was incredibly empowering to make lights in that way.
And one of the things I learned really quickly was that our ancestors, unlike us,
our ancestors really were able to viscerally and personally experience the
cost of making light.
So the energetic cost of making light.
Also, I quickly realized that our ancestors,
in order to have artificial light, had to be intimately familiar with
landscapes directly around them and also with the species directly around them.
You know, knowing you know which which species
might be good fodder.
All of those things play into that ability to make light.
So not only did this lead me to appreciate darkness and and the human
ability to make lights, it ultimately changed the way that I use
light in my life.
So after this experience I started using in my house amber and red light bulbs
after dark.
So when the night, when the sky goes amber and red outside
as the sunsets, the lights in my house go amber and red.
So those warm tone light Spectra do not disrupt wildlife and they don't disrupt
human, they don't disrupt life on Earth like
blue Spectra light dies.
And so that has really been an incredible change for me in my life.
I and I find it a really, a really restful change that I've made.
So I realized, took the entire journey, but I realized toward the end of my
journey, you know, early on after I learned about how
artificial light effects fireflies, I started, you know,
turning off porch lights.
I started like using curtains more often because I was like, oh,
I don't want to have light trespass.
You know, I don't want to disturb the fireflies
outside.
But it really took my entire journey for me to realize and to understand that when
I was doing that, when I was closing those curtains,
I was still just wrapping that artificial light around myself.
And so watching all of these different species responding to artificial light
helped me absorb the reality that I am also an animal.
We are animals and we have reactions to artificial light.
So, you know, watching mods, you know, bang against a porch light,
watching a salamander, you know, get confused from its migratory route by
a flashlight.
All of these things over time help me understand that I am also having a
reaction when I'm in a dark room.
And my, you know, my, my phone is just in my face like a
flashlight or when I'm in a living room and the lights are like high noon that I
am also having a physical reaction to that.
So fireflies can make light inside of their bodies.
That's fantastic.
We marvel over that reality, and it's wondrous.
But I came to understand it's also pretty wondrous that humans,
we are the only species that can make light outside of our bodies.
So we have this incredible, you know, skill that we have developed on Create
Light, Make light.
And we're kind of at a point now where we just can't get enough light,
but we have within our power the ability to turn lights off.
This is a rare environmental issue that can be addressed pretty much immediately
with pretty immediate results.
So even though it is a growing concern, it is a concern that we have the power to
to do something about.
And so I tried overtime not to focus on what artificial light takes away,
but to instead focus on what natural darkness stands to offer.
Because natural darkness really does have a lot to offer.
It's a resource, it's a richness, it's a habitat that we have and again,
are quickly losing.
But my, my hope is that night magic will lead to
conversations that will get people thinking about this in a different way.
Also, you know, as a, as a talking point, as a starting point for,
for large conversations.
And I have no idea where they'll go.
One of my neighbors and where I live, neighbor.
She lives pretty far down the road, but still counts as a neighbor.
But when I was writing the book, she was like, oh,
I'm so glad you're writing this because her,
another farmer across the road had just put up a giant security light that was
shining into her living room.
She's like, I just don't know how to talk to him
about this.
And so I really tried to, to write a book that would feel like an
invitation.
So an invitation to explore.
And I thought, OK, I want to write a book that she could
just slip into that farmer's mailbox.
And I told that story at A at a book event once and people came up afterwards
and they had a little stack and they said, OK, make this out to us, please.
And then on this one, can you just write to Don turn out the
light?
And they had me sign it.
They didn't sign it, but they slipped it into Don's mailbox.
And I really hope that Don was receptive to that.
But truly in general, this, you know, this project,
this entire journey that I've been on hopefully will serve as inspiration for
people to explore their own nightscape and also just as an invitation to think
about darkness not as a foe, but more as a friend to align with
darkness.
Darkness is not something to push away.
It's something that we can choose to embrace.
And so I would love to, to hear from you all and to answer
questions that you might have, things that have, you know,
come up as I've been talking ideas and thoughts that you might have.
And hopefully over time, this can support your,
your studies and your good works in the world.
And, and I would just love to hear from you
all.
So just a quick reminder everyone to please post your questions in the Q&
A by clicking on the Q& A at the bottom.
I don't know if Ryan has found some questions in the audience.
Ethel, you just want to take the questions
online.
I'm not seeing any questions here.
Jason, can you take care of the Q&A?
Derek, is the, are people still hearing me right now?
OK, let's try.
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me OK?
Good.
I would just switch mechanisms.
So one question from Sydney was what do you think are the easiest,
most impactful changes that we can make that would help us start our own
nightscape?
It's a great question.
And so Dark Sky International is a really great resource if you would like to you
know, look at some specific lists and
guidelines.
They have suggestions on types of fixtures that you can use outdoors that
that direct lights.
I personally think that one of the most important changes that can be made is
switching from blue Spectra light bulbs to warm tone light bulbs,
particularly outdoors.
So if you use, you know, like an amber or a red light bulb
outdoors on your porch light, it's it's much less disruptive than a,
a light bulb that uses blue Spectra.
And again, you know, in my life and in my house,
I've even moved to using those warm tones.
I have specific lamps that I use indoors that after dark,
I switch to those warm tones indoors as well because again,
it doesn't affect human Physiology as much either.
So, you know, melatonin is we're not able to produce
melatonin for sleep as as easily and and when exposed to blue tone bloom spectral
light as we are those warmer tones.
They just don't disrupt natural cycles as much.
So use of, of warm tone bulbs, they're, you know,
guidelines for different fixtures that can be used outdoors.
I think those are pretty immediate things that can be done.
And also just to start the experience of, of experiencing darkness wherever you are.
You know, sometimes people say, oh, I live in a place that, you know,
it's hard to find darkness and I'm like, you can even start in your own bedroom.
I, I found that over time, once I started becoming more aware of
these lights, you know, kind of sit, sit in your bedroom in darkness and take
inventory of lights in your bedroom.
And I think you'll find probably as I did, that, you know, there were all of these,
you know, lights on chargers.
There were tiny lights everywhere that I ended up.
I, I used like, you know, electrical or painters tape sometimes to
cover those and also just to experience in your own yard, like from your porch,
from your backyard, like the darkest places you can find to
start to acclimate to kind of re acclimate to that space.
And you know, to look, to listen, to avoid looking at your phone or screens
for a period of time.
I mean, having someone sit outside in the dark by
themselves is countercultural, but there really are some really
wonderful things to be gained by by doing that.
Thank you.
Related question is, do you ever have a fear of being in
complete darkness?
Yes.
So I think that the fear, I would say that that fear has lessened
over time.
And part of that for me really has been getting to know my neighbors in a sense,
you know, I I deer huffing in the dark is actually
really terrifying.
Spoiler alert again, if you read the book, I do have a close encounter with a bobcat.
So it's just, it's just nervous, you know, it's,
it's easy to get nervous when you step outside.
I have travelled around the world, I've taken trips around the world solo.
But for me to even go outside in my own neighborhood now and complete darkness.
I'm like, hey guys, anybody want to take a walk with me?
Because there is that feeling of safety in numbers.
But I I still get nervous.
But now that I know the voices again of these creatures around me,
it's helped me be less fearful.
And I realized over time, you know, I didn't recognize the voice of a screech
owl.
But now it's like, oh, there's the screech owl.
You know, I didn't know what the huff of a deer
sounded like.
Now I do.
So I I gained awareness and it's made me a lot less nervous about being in the
dark.
Thank you.
Olivia asked.
How can we as students work to reduce light pollution?
Thanks for asking that, Olivia.
I, you know, I think that it can start in your own
life, taking inventory of how you use lights.
Then it can be like, you know, sharing with friends about how they use
lights.
And again, you know, in my entire journey, my process in in night magic and I
continually, I, I love this concept that people were
getting excited to experiencing, to experience things that I was
experiencing.
So I think engaging people in a way where it makes like, makes it exciting,
like you can create like mini quest to appreciate the dark.
I think that actually matters a lot because again,
what I found is people not so much responding to the negatives of light
pollution, but rather the positives and this idea of
discovery and curiosity about appreciating the dark and starting to
love the darkness.
And I think until we really can think of darkness not as a void,
not as something to be avoided, but rather as like a habitat and this
cornucopia of life, we can't really understand why it would
be important to, to preserve.
So there's that personal aspect.
And then also just on a, on an institutional level or communal
level, you know, once you start looking into it,
thinking about it, just sharing that conversation, you know,
we can look at who, who makes the decisions about light
fixtures, who, who makes the decisions about what type
of bulbs are purchased?
Because, you know, you have a town that changes all of their
bulbs from blue light to a amber light.
It's, it's a huge positive impact for, for an area.
So those things can make changes and finding out who makes those decisions can
be meaningful.
I think one, one of my great honors is people who have
gotten copies of Night Magic to share with their county commissioners or,
you know, people, local Park Rangers, people who, who have vested interest.
So I I think just getting people excited, getting yourself excited and having ways
to to raise conversations locally and to look at what's needed locally is
important.
Herbert asked a question definitely related to Dawin Festival Week.
From an evolutionary standpoint, what selective advantage is there to be a
light producer?
I love this and I actually I I was thinking another one to bring up with
drum festival moth evolution.
But so, you know, a lot of times scientists aren't exactly
sure with with every species what the advantages are.
But so for example, with foxfire, with bioluminescent fungi, they,
they think that that attracts insects that therefore can spread spores.
So there there are a lot of different benefits for different species in in in
using lights again, with glow worms a little bit tricky that
also they think that that might be a too other insects into these little webs that
they spend a lot of drama there.
And just another another thing that this just made me think of that I wanted to
bring up there.
There are studies that show that moths in urban areas have actually started to they
have over time.
They are, they are not being as attracted to
artificial light as moths in rural areas that have not been exposed to artificial
light.
So there are these studies that are showing that moths are beginning to
generations are, are beginning to alter the way that they
respond to light, which is interesting, interesting and an important silicon too.
I, I, I like to just think, you know, mods might survive by evolving to,
to adjust to this light, but I, I think overall we're just going to
really benefit from lessening the artificial light all around.
Ryan is in Vets Hall and I think he has a couple of questions from students.
So actually I'm I'll jump in and ask a couple kind of sort of combine a couple
of questions.
One is from actually John Keenan, who's the president of Salem State
University, asking what was the most luminescent
Organism you have found?
And then I also wanted to throw in one of our colleagues,
Dia Popolizio is watching with her six year old son and would like to know how
you find all these cool things.
So John's question most luminescent, you know, I actually,
in terms of actual brightness, I glow worms are actually incredibly
bright for for their size.
I so the the glow worms that I specifically am writing about in the book
are it's Ophelia for Tony and actually found as far north,
even found as far north as you know, I Appalachia,
Pennsylvania area and they are incredibly bright.
They are incredibly understudied.
There are some people, the very few people doing research on
these are actually medical researchers.
So there are, you know, applications for for that bioluminescent
and medical procedures.
But so glow worms are are the brightest, brightest blue lumina since I should say
they're like different categories there.
And so how do I find these cool things to look at in terms of our six year old
audience member?
I think that, well, first of all, you have to just get curious and then you
just have to start digging around.
You just have to start looking around.
And so that can mean like research that you're doing, you know,
online searches that you're doing, that can mean actually getting outside.
And so you know, now that I've told you that there are
Firefly larvae, sometimes called glow worms,
that if you know a spot where there are fireflies,
then you now know that there are Firefly larvae.
So there are little seeds of light on the ground.
So you can actually just go and try to find these these larvae.
I would also say if I was sick and I was looking for an interesting adventure
close to home, I might look into getting a black light,
which I, I write a little bit about this in the
book.
So AUV flashlight, so there are there are animals that that
produce light are bioluminescent.
So animals that hold light that can be revealed with AUV light are
biofluorescent.
And there are a lot of a lot of insects, a lot of things,
a lot of living beings in your yard that are biofluorescent that aren't
necessarily bioluminescent.
But if you take AUV light, you'll find you'll find things out there.
And people are discovering all the time that species we didn't know were
biofluorescent actually are Flying squirrels, for example, they had no idea.
But if you shine AUV flashlight on a flying squirrel,
they're fluorescent pink because they're biofluorescent.
We just learned this because never before had someone taken AUV light to to see
what they might look like.
But caterpillars, there are a lot of Caterpillar species
that will show up under UV light.
And that's a lot of fun.
But again, so specific to where you are, you, you know,
start digging around and maybe you know, mass Audubon,
look into the the vernal pool programs that they have.
If you start looking around, you will find some really cool stuff.
I promise.
I am not afraid to make that promise.
I'm committed to to that.
If you if you experience the night world, you will also find some unexpected cool
things.
I think we just have time for one more question.
Sure.
Yeah.
So Cesar or Cesar wants to know where are the majority of fireflies in the country
Would like they would like to visit them.
Well, fireflies are all over North America like
East Coast, Midwest, really great places to find fireflies.
If you're looking to see the synchronous fireflies,
there are really specific pockets of synchronous fireplays and there's there,
there really can be found.
There is actually population again as far north as Pennsylvania.
So there are pockets of synchronous fireflies along the East Coast,
kind of that you can find kind of following the Appalachian chain.
But again, there are hundreds of species of
fireflies.
And if you have a have a spot, if you have a friend who has a yard where
they're like, oh, I've got fireflies in my yard,
Chances are if you have fireflies there, you not only have one species,
you have multiple species there.
And every Firefly has a blink pattern that is specific to its species,
just like fingerprints.
The most common is the Big Dipper, which actually makes a little J stroke.
It looks like a Big Dipper.
So if you set out to, to to witness that, you probably will be able to my favorite
Firefly just stuff what is called a blue ghost and it's actually neon blue and
they only blink every 60 seconds.
So if you can find a population of blue ghost fireflies that are concentrated in
the Appalachians, if you're standing among them, they just,
that means that they're really, they don't even really blink.
They're just floating around you, these little neon blue orbs floating
around you like fairies.
It's fantastic.
But you know, there, there are there are different Firefly
species all over the East Coast, not very far from where you are.
And so I'm excited to think that Firefly season is coming up.
So I hope you'll come up with a mini quest and grab some friends and start
appreciating darkness.
And, you know, back to the question of how to lessen
light pollution, I think that getting people excited about
being in the dark plays a huge role in that.
So have fun.
Thank you so much, Leanne for a great talk.
I just wanted to point out that in our Q&A on the webinar,
there were multiple comments that weren't questions,
but just a representative of those comments.
Jane said, I don't have a question, but I thought your talk was so lovely.
So thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it.