Fireflies in Summer

Unless you have the good fortune to be directly on the water, there is very little to be said for an East Coast summer . Heat steams up from the pavement and presses down from the air on all sides. Sweat pools in the creases of your eyelids and trickles down the side of your nose — not the clean sweat produced by the sun and as quickly dried by it, but an ambient condensation whose provenance is never clear and which never goes away. The thick, verdant undergrowth, so beautiful in the breezes of spring and so different from the open Western forests , reveals itself as a dripping welter of breeding mosquitoes , invisible gnats, and lurking ticks. Its quiet profusion of life becomes ominous. We have travelled back to the primaeval swamps , the crawling greenhouse of ferns from back