In ‘Night Magic,’ an author urges us to find the wonders of nature in the dark

Featured photo: Author Leigh Ann Henion’s new book, Night Magic, explores the relationship that animals and humans have to darkness.

Writer Leigh Ann Henion hadn’t given light, or the absence of it, much thought over the course of her life.

“It took me a while to realize,” says Henion, who lives in western NC. “I never really considered what is darkness and what is light. It took me a while to realize that light is energy coming at us; light is a stimulant.”

And in the absence of that energy, strange and wondrous things can happen.

That’s the premise of Henion’s new book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark. Henion will be talking about her book at Scuppernnong Books in Greensboro this Friday at 6 p.m. The book is available for purchase there and also at Bookmarks in Winston-Salem.

Like most other people, Henion had regular lights set up in her house for years. Some LED lights in lamps, some overhead lighting. But in the past few months, she’s dimmed it down.

“My house was ablaze with artificial light at one point,” Henion says. “But now, I use red or amber lights after sunset to naturally have the indoors match the outdoors. It helps me go to bed. It’s easing into the night that I was really missing out on.”

The journey for Henion started when she wrote an article about the synchronous fireflies that can be seen in the Great Smoky Mountains. The male fireflies flash their lights in unison to court females, creating a fantastical light show for about three weeks each year.

“Through the process of researching for that article, I learned about light pollution…and how it affects life on earth — all life on earth,” Henion says.

Part of the book explores the curious ways in which certain animal species come to life at night. For example, Henion talks about the beloved woolly worm, a species of caterpillar that has its own festival in Banner Elk each year. Fuzzy, with black and brown stripes, the woolly worm can be found across the state and has become synonymous with the coming of winter, much like the groundhog with spring. But what Henion didn’t know was the beautiful moth the worm transforms into — the Isabella tiger moth.

“I was so focused on the diurnal form, I never knew that it ultimately becomes an Isabella tiger moth,” Henion says. “I had never really pointedly set out to spend time in the dark to get to know my neighbors in the dark.”

And that’s due to humans’ characterization as dark, and thus nighttime, as a negative experience, she says.

“We think of darkness as nothingness,” she says. “We think of darkness as death, but darkness is full of life.”

Another species that Henion discovered as part of her research is a type of glow worm that lives in western NC and actually, right in her backyard.

“I found these glow worms in my neighborhood that I’ve driven by with my headlights on for 20 years,” she says. “There are things you can’t experience unless you turn the lights down. Darkness can reveal things that light cannot.”

And light doesn’t just affect our mammalian and insect neighbors. They affect us humans, too, Henion says.

According to research done for her book, Henion says that the kind of light that most people are exposed to — artificial light — can have negative effects on people’s moods and even lead to depressive behaviors. Blue light in particular — the kind emitted by phone screens, computers and TVs — is energy dense, Henion says, like tiny energy pellets that temporarily bleach out proteins in our eyes. But with amber or warm light, the process is slower, gentler.

“It’s a slow siphoning rather than bleaching,” Henion says. “It isn’t as disruptive.”

One study Henion cites found that people who were exposed to low lighting engaged in more imaginative, creative thinking compared to the more critical thinking processes that took place for those speaking under standard light.

“It’s not just about sleeping,” Henion says. “Light alters our ways of thinking in ways that we don’t quite understand.”

As an understudied area, Henion says that there’s still much to learn about the impact of lighting on the world and the effects it can have on us all. For those wanting to test it out for themselves, Henion suggests taking stock of the kinds of lighting in your house. See if you can switch to amber lighting and minimize the amount of blue light you expose yourself to. Then, if you can, immerse yourself in darkness from time to time.

“It’s so revolutionary to value darkness,” she says. “Darkness is something that we need to invite into our lives and into our yards, neighborhoods, communities. We think of darkness as the unknown, and there are absolutely dangers in darkness, but there are wonders, too.”

Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark is available for purchase at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro and Bookmarks in Winston-Salem. Henion will be talking about her book at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro this Friday at 6 p.m.