It’s firefly fever, y’all.❤️

John-Michael Scurio
Jul 13
3 min read

Eureka Springs, you mystical jewel box, you’ve done it again.

This spring, she wept. Oh, how she wept! The skies opened and gave us a season of rain that felt more Shakespearean soliloquy than forecast. April puddled into May, and May just kept on weeping like a teenager who finally read Wuthering Heights. The creeks became composers, each one humming a different melody. Mud sloshed underfoot, moss made itself at home, and even the Crescent Hotel looked like a swamp.

But here’s the thing about Eureka: even when she’s drenched, she dances.

And now?

Oh, darling . . . now the fireflies have arrived.

It’s a midsummer dream made real, and it’s all thanks to our soggy, generous spring. The rain nourished everything (not just the wildflowers and the frogs and the secret mushrooms that grow like fairy umbrellas under oak) but it stirred up something ancient in the very soil.

Something luminous. Something winged.

As dusk falls over the hills and hollers, this place flickers to life in a way that would make even J.R.R. Tolkien put down his pipe and say, “Well, that’s a bit magical.”

They're everywhere. Not just a few here and there, blinking politely like distant porch lights. Oh! No! These are full-cast, all-call, Broadway-style fireflies, lighting up every forest path, roadside ditch, and mossy glade like it’s their final dress rehearsal and the fae realm is in the audience.

It’s firefly fever, y’all.

One stroll down Spring Street after sundown and you’ll swear you stepped into a faerybook . . . not a fairy tale, mind you . . . but an actual leather-bound, ivy-laced faerybook, the kind passed down in old forest families who remember when the trees could whisper your name.

You’ll see them twinkling in the air above the Basin Park amphitheater. You’ll catch them swirling like tiny lanterns along the wooden fences of the Crescent trail. They dot the path behind Black Bass Lake like candlelight in motion. Some float slow and deliberate, others zip like a toddler with a toy.

There’s an electric poetry to it; light made alive, rhythm made visible.

The older locals say they haven't seen a season like this in thirty years. “It’s the rain,” they say, all gravel and grace. “They love the moisture. They lay their eggs in damp wood. All that water gave ‘em everything they needed. And now, look at 'em. The water continues to evolve this place day in and day out."

I looked to the sky tonight like I was pointing out stars.

But they weren’t stars.

They were Eurekan fireflies.

So, what do we do now that we’ve been blessed with this magical infestation of light?

We lean in. We slow down. We ditch the screens and let the kids catch a few in mason jars (with holes, of course). We take the long way home. We sip wine on porches and clink glasses under the blinking canopy. We bring someone we love (or someone we want to love) and sit quietly, letting the fireflies do all the talking.

Because right now ... right this moment in time ... Eureka Springs is lit from within.

Spoiler alert: it’s not just the bugs.

So, here’s my invitation to you, dear reader:

Come visit.

Stay late.

Don’t miss this.