Night Magic
Leigh Ann Henion
Algonquin Books, $30
I feel like I’ve been out all night. In my mind, I’ve been walking the mountains and meadows of the Appalachian region after dark. I’ve encountered spotted salamanders, synchronous and blue ghost fireflies, glowworms and different kinds of moths and bats. My guide has been Leigh Ann Henion, who seeks to restore night to its rightful place as a wonderland of nature and renewal in her latest book, Night Magic.
Henion pursues nighttime journeys as a balm, searching for respite from the near-constant illumination due to artificial light. She wonders, what’s life like in the dark? “Darkness is often presented as a void of doom rather than a force of nature that nourishes lives, including our own,” Henion writes. “This is the story of how I set out to re-center darkness by spending time with some of the diverse and awe-inspiring life-forms that are nurtured by it.”
Henion — an author who writes about the natural world, travel and other topics — takes readers to Tennessee, Ohio, Alabama and her home state of North Carolina. In the company of friends, her son, scientists and other night-curious strangers, she seeks the fauna, flora and fungi that thrive in darkness, sometimes searching in her own backyard.
The book moves through spring, summer and fall, each season focusing on a few different life-forms. In the spring, for example, she witnesses spotted salamanders, which live much of their lives in darkness. These black or dark-brown amphibians with cheery, yellow-orange spots spend most of their time below ground. The salamanders briefly emerge during spring nights to breed in ephemeral pools, areas fed by rain that dry out periodically.
Henion’s night excursions continue with appearances from glowworms, which are luminous…
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