glowing in the woods

During one of my first Boy Scout campouts, in the pine woods bordering a soybean field, my little group of scouts, segregated from the older scouts, noticed something glowing green in the jet-black woods around us.

Having very recently been subjected to snipe hunts and flaming farts from the older boys, we decided to investigate on our own. Using our crook neck official boy scout flashlights bought at McRaes, where we got our uniforms, we made our way through the dark to the mystery.

This was tricky because the flashlight made the green glow go away. Eventually, we did find the source.

A pine tree died, and its decaying body sat on the floor of the Mississippi forest. If we turned our flashlights off, the glow came back. If we pulled away some of the crumbling wood, more and stronger green glow showed.

The next morning, we discussed it with the scoutmaster and the older scouts. Instead of solving our mystery, they told us that we shouldn't have gone off on our own.

Returning home, it rained for several days. I asked my mother if she could drop me off at the north side library while she did her marketing. I was old enough to take my bike, but it was raining, and she didn't like me going under the I-55 bridge by myself.

In those days before the internet, the library was where you found things. In the early seventies, things that glowed in the dark were associated with monsters because Aurora made glow-in-the-dark model kits of the Wolf Man and King Kong.

Foxfire is the name given to a class of fungus that spawns in rotting wood and produces a bioluminescent glow. There is an answer to every mystery.

I've tried several times to find a way to incorporate this experience into a longer story. I haven't done so yet. It makes a pretty good, but shortish story by itself. Children need mysteries. They sustain us when we're old and think we've seen too much of the world.

The Eagle Scout in charge of my little boy scout group died not long ago. His father had been involved with Mississippi Power and Light Company. On the day this all happened, I was mad with him for not giving us the answer to the mystery. On the way home from the library, I was glad he hadn't.