‘Turning off the porch lights’ to reveal nature’s hidden marvels

Leigh Ann Henion has stepped through the looking glass. You can too, she says. Simply turn off the lights and venture outside.

That’s the promise of Ms. Henion’s new book, “Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark.” In it, she details her own journey to become reacquainted with darkness. Along the way, she meets a wonderland of nocturnal creatures, wrestles with the societal tendency to chase away darkness, and confronts her own fears of the unknown.

The result is a nature lover’s guide to the dark that unfolds like a novel. Ms. Henion spoke with the Monitor’s Noelle Swan. Their conversation has been edited and condensed.

In your preface, you talk about the Western world having a deep cultural bias against darkness. What made you want to break from that tradition with this book?

When I started the book, I don’t know that I necessarily knew how deep that cultural bias was. But once you’re alert to it, you start noticing it everywhere. We’re taught to fight the dying of the light. The book from the beginning [helped me] to think about darkness, not as a place of doom or a place of dearth but as something that actually holds value.

What was your initial spark for this book?

It really traces back to a magazine story that I did for The Washington Post about synchronous fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I had this really restorative experience of spending time with true darkness. I had readers reach out to me and say they read this story and it inspired them to start turning off their porch lights, because they were now curious to see what might be revealed if they invited darkness to come a little bit closer.

Your reporting took you out into the woods at night. A lot of it was in guided experiences where there were other people around. But some of it was alone, in your own backyard and beyond. How did you deal with your own fears about darkness?

I don’t know that I knew that darkness was going to actually make me as nervous as it sometimes did. This book sort of was the process of becoming more comfortable. My curiosity kind of overpowered my fear, and my openness became stronger than any fear that might have kept me closed to exploring.

Your son, Archer, tags along with you on a bunch of these walks. How was that, experiencing this with a preteen?

I think he was surprised to occasionally find himself a little bit nervous. I was also surprised to find myself nervous, so close to home. This is a landscape that we truly know. So to have it be such a different place, I think, was surprising for him. He still can’t believe how excited I get about fireflies and fox fire and things like this. But by the end he would say, “That was actually pretty cool.” So it was great to be able to share that experience with him.

Throughout all of this, you encountered a ton of incredibly cool creatures. Did you have any favorites?

They all taught me different things. There were some that surprised me more than others. For example: fireflies. I was amazed to find that they live for years glowing underground. In the book, I talk about how it was absolutely humbling to recognize that I had always thought that the glowworm caves of New Zealand were amazing, and that I would love to visit them, only to realize that I have an Appalachian glowworm species in my neighborhood. I chose to focus on where I live. But wherever you are, it’s almost assured that you are surrounded by amazing things at night that you’re not familiar with.

What are the other key takeaways that you’re hoping readers will glean from your book?

One of the takeaways that has really affected me in my regular day-to-day or night-to-night life is this concept of light pollution. It’s an environmental issue that can really be taken care of by turning off the light. What we really need to do is allow ourselves to rest. Reducing light pollution and inviting darkness to be part of our waking lives is to invite a little bit of serenity.

An idea that intrigued me was this notion that people ask bigger questions in the dark. Why is that?

Consider the conversations that take place at a campfire as opposed to conversations that take place at a conference under fluorescent lighting. Research indicates that we, as a species, have tended to fill [darkness] with more creative storytelling and music and artistic ways of interacting and communicating knowledge versus the more practical aspects of daylight conversations. Night gives us this palette. Light allows us to see, but then it creates boundaries. When you’re in darkness, the possibilities are infinite.