MARQUETTE — “Man has invented his doom, first step was touching the moon,” – Bob Dylan

The night was warm and uncharacteristically quiet.

Above me, from end to end and back again, the darkness of the sky was adorned with thousands of tiny, twinkling star lights, like pin pricks showing through a backlit black piece of broadcloth.

On nights like this, the patterns and shapes of constellations seem to jump out of their background, clearly proclaiming their identities.

Here I am. Orion, the hunter.

Here we are too, the Seven Sisters.

Across the miles and miles of space, the countless constellations stretch end-to-end, back-to-back, front-to-front. Together, they inherently create ancient star maps to worlds beyond our making or real understanding.

Early explorers used the stars to guide their passage across dark, tempestuous and forbidding seas down here on Earth.

Then, from the blackness enveloping the forest trees, the low-lying wetlands and the granitic cliffs and bluffs, came more sparkles of light tonight, pin-pricking the dark and gathered cloak of nighttime.

They were much smaller, but certainly just as bright, or so it seemed.

To me, it looked like someone was out there in the woods with a pen light, shining it toward me, moving it around.

The light would then suddenly extinguish and reappear a moment or two later a few feet away.

These lights were instead the mysterious little bulbs of fireflies. I love experiencing the phenomenon of fireflies’ nighttime flight dances on summer nights.

The incredible displays of these little flies are caused by a chemical reaction that creates cold light, as opposed to the warm light of light bulbs that lose most of their energy as heat.

Fireflies create these glowing displays to attract mates, warn would-be predators of their bitter taste and attract prey.

The two best firefly displays I have ever witnessed include one in Indiana in the dark woods of Brown County State Park and another much closer to home, in Marquette County, when dozens of fireflies bobbed up and down in the misty air above the rapids of a quickly flowing creek.

Watching firefly displays is not unlike watching meteor showers, with the lights of fireflies and meteors both popping out of the black night skies instantly and unexpectedly.

Their fiery glow only lasts a short time until we are again scanning the darkness, waiting for another light or lights, hoping to be impressed or undone again by a shining showing of light.

By far, the best meteor shower I ever saw occurred in California, along the Devil’s Punchbowl access road in the Mojave Desert. I laid back against the windshield while sitting on the hood of my pickup truck enjoying the view.

This showing of the Perseids shower one August was absolutely jaw-dropping. This year’s peak is expected on Aug. 12.

I was disturbed to read a few days ago that we may all be deprived of the opportunity to view and enjoy firefly displays for too many more years.

Human impacts, including light pollution, use of pesticides, habitat loss, research gaps and climate-change-related drought are said to be responsible for a decline so precipitous that in 2024 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service considered listing at least one East Coast species of these bugs as threatened or endangered.

Reading that, I’ll be sure to get out as much as I can to see fireflies.

Last week, I wrote in this space about the decline of purple martins in this region, and my hopes of helping to bring them back.

Another favorite bird species of mine, also in peril here, are chimney swifts. Like martins, their dominion is the sky. They also share a huge appetite for insects, and they both travel to South America during the wintertime.

Unlike martins, chimney swifts are rarely, if ever, seen perching. They don’t land on utility wires, tree branches or fence rails. All four of their toes on each foot are at pointed forward, making them most closely related to hummingbirds.

Because of their stogie-like bodies, chimney swifts are often described as “flying cigars.” Like purple martins, they once nested colonially in natural areas but have become adapted to nesting almost exclusively in human-built structures.

In the case of chimney swifts, that means chimneys, where they build half-circle nests made of sticks affixed to the inside walls of chimneys with their salNighttime roosts of chimney swifts can contain thousands of birds, but only one pair of swifts nests himney swifts make a chattering sound that carries a good distance. This is how they are most often first detected. It is how I found a group flying over Ludington Park in Escanaba recently as I was there looking for purple martinThat day, I witnessed something I have never seen in all my years of watching and loving chimney swifts. I was looking at some low-flying martins when I saw a bird glide into the emerging leaves on a tree at the park.

I didn’t get a close enough look at it to see what it was.

I was turning my head away when I heard the snap of a twig. I swiveled my head back around quickly and saw a chimney swift flying out of the foliage with a short stick in i I immediately realized what was happening and was at once stunned and e, chimney swifts in Michigan have been designated as an “Orange Alert Tipping Point Species.”

This means “they have seen long-term declines in their population while also experiencing rapid declines within the past decade.”

“Reasons for this decline include insecticide use, loss of man-made nesting and roosting structures and habitat loss on their non-breeding grounds in South America.

“Although the species is attracted to urban areas with high human population densities, this species is often overlooked and its distribution and numbers in Michigan are poorly understood.”

I am sensing some underlying themes here.

While all the intensive damage we have wrought on the planet continues to march on at a horrendous pace over a relatively short span of time, nature and her creatures continue to struggle greatly to survive under diminished conditions.

Damn our human greed, arrogance and destructive tendencies.

With our track record, it doesn’t appear that the outlook would be great for the designs we have on Mars and the moon.

On June 5, a Japanese lander crashed into the moon after being launched from a SpaceX rocket. The crash destroyed several experiments and a rover mission of the lander intended to show how future voyagers to the moon could harvest and mine moon resources.

Elon Musk, and others who want to occupy Mars, look to the red planet as the next best getaway from Earth. Whatever the attraction is, I know there aren’t any fireflies, purple martins or chimney swifts up there to enjoy.

So, it’s not likely I’ll be going.

From the pictures I’ve seen of Earth taken from space and the talk I’ve heard from astronauts who have been up there to experience that glorious view, I think anyone sitting in the gray dust of the moon looking back here would miss it.

Even with all the stupidity and destruction dealt to the world by the human race, there’s no place like home.

I would bet that after just a couple of hours on Mars most people would be clicking the heels of their ruby-colored space boots together trying to get back here.

The fireflies tonight are not in extreme abundance, but even a handful is enough to be a delight. It’s likely they’ll grow in number over the next few nights.

The loons are calling from the lake. Distress calls make me wonder what’s happening out there on the water or the shores of the small islands where the birds nest.

Maybe there’s a fox or a coyote hungry for loon eggs. Those birds are next to helpless on land.