Starting in childhood, we’re constantly taught to fear the dark — trained to sleep with nightlights, told not to stay out after dark, regaled with fairy tales of dark, dangerous forests and the creatures lurking within them. But what if this is the wrong way to view half of our planet’s daily rotation? What if darkness and night are just as important — and just as beautiful — as sunlight and daytime?
This question forms the jumping-off point for Leigh Ann Henion’s Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark. In it, she re-examines her own relationship with nighttime and explores what we’re losing by banishing darkness everywhere.
Arranged seasonally from spring to fall (no winter), Night Magic peers into how ecosystems function in the dark, and Henion highlights the particular types of organisms, ranging from birds to insects to fungi, that rely on darkness to carry out their life cycles. She deftly presents why light pollution is a major problem and how it’s getting worse — the way blue-spectrum light from LED streetlights interferes with many animals’ instinctual senses and drives them to enact daytime behaviors when they shouldn’t.
It’s the same issue humans experience when staring at digital screens for too long. In all cases, constant exposure to blue light pushes animals (including humans) to distraction and exhaustion. Henion doesn’t harangue, but she effectively makes the case that our obsession with constantly keeping spaces lit is wreaking havoc with already-stressed ecosystems.
Henion begins exploring her Appalachian home in the dark to find screech owls and salamanders. She does indeed find them, as they seek nests away from security lights on porches or stadium lights that keep city parks in a constant state of daytime. In the process of acclimating to nighttime environments, Henion awakens her own senses, challenges the innate fears of darkness that we’re all inundated with, and discovers a new appreciation for all types of species that creep, crawl, fly, eat and live their lives in the dark.
She also introduces the reader to numerous subcultures that native plant enthusiasts will understand — those with a passion for what are considered “niche” parts of the natural world. We meet people who travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to see glowworms and fireflies in the mountains of North Carolina, or to attend a festival actually named Mothapalooza in Ohio. Of the Lepidoptera order, it’s butterflies who get all the attention, but as Henion points out, moths are crucial for pollination and they display the same beauty and variation as their more famous cousins.
We all see moths driven into deadly insanity by lights — porch lights, streetlights, and more — and Henion’s immersion in Mothapalooza and the stories of people trying to conserve these unsung insect heroes leaves her and the reader with a greater appreciation for these creatures.
She also attends Bat Blitz, a multi-day event centered on these much-maligned mammals of the night. Henion notes how bats, like moths, have negative reputations but serve key ecological purposes: “The reality is, when we displace and kill bats, their pathogens are free to seek us as hosts.” She acknowledges how bats have been blamed for spreading COVID-19, and with the later stages of the pandemic as the backdrop of her travels, it’s a poignant reminder of all that we don’t understand about how we’re connected to other species.
Her explorations of bioluminescent fungi and night-flowering plants like tobacco don’t challenge our preconceived notions of what is dangerous or what is pretty, but they reveal that there is so much more to landscapes at night than we normally think about. Because of course in the process of finding these plants and organisms, Henion finds insects that interact with them, and taken together this leaves her with an even greater appreciation for the rhythms and cycles humans have become increasingly divorced from.
The final chapters of Night Magic focus on Henion’s attempts to master traditional fire-building skills, and while this effort is an admirable part of her larger push to reconnect with the natural world, these sections feel disjointed compared to the earlier ones. But, it’s a minor error in an otherwise enlightening, dare I say illuminating, look at the ecosystems we so often refuse to see.
This book is also an easy read through the latest research on light pollution, which is presented thoughtfully but not in a dry, academic way. Henion’s adventures will likely inspire readers to venture out into their own yards and nearby parks to see what they’ve been missing. Perhaps some of us will even push for changes to publicly lit spaces, and renew our appreciation for the wonders we used to understand and could possibly find again.
Rose Rankin is a freelance writer outside of Chicago and a member of the Wild Ones Greater Kane County Chapter. You can follow her on Instagram @bringbackprairies.