It’s midnight in mid-June. The rain is coming down hard. Thunder rolls overhead. I feel dampness on my arms when water seeps in the seams of my rain suit. I am about a quarter of a mile back of the barn in the meadow by the creek, feeding the third bottle of the day to Rascal, our blind calf. He is now 8 weeks old and grazing along side his mother with the rest of the herd. It would be difficult to know he is blind if I didn't tell you.

As Rascal enthusiastically sucks the warm milk from the bottle and the rain patters on my rain suit, I am mesmerized by a thousand flickering fireflies floating effortlessly against the dark backdrop of the trees that surround the meadow. They float above the grass, blinking eerie green beacons of light against the darkness of the trees. It’s like sitting in an Imax theater with the screen curving around, where a person is right in the middle of something much bigger than himself. Who would have guessed that fireflies would be flying in such a hard rain?

Nightime on the farm is special. On a rainy night, the darkness is really dark! There are no streetlights out here. On a clear night the stars are spectacular. The moon can light up the landscape so brightly a flashlight is unnecessary. There is a chorus of a thousand frogs singing at the tops of their lungs. An owl calls from a nearby tree down by the creek. A short distance away a pack of coyotes call to each other as they hunt. The coyotes fall silent, then the night is pierced by the scream of a rabbit being caught. Nature has a way of keeping everything in balance, and it’s not always a quiet process.

Rascal is done with his bottle. He and I play for a couple of minutes before he heads back into the meadow to find his mother, and I head back to the house to catch a few minutes of TV weather before turning in for the night. I take one last glance around the meadow, still mesmerized by the sight of a thousand flickering fireflies as they wink and blink their eerie green glow. Then I walk back to the barn through the rain and lose sight of the fireflies and the stars when the  mercury vapor light on the barn takes control of the darkness.

I’m going to miss those midnight walks back to the meadow when Rascal is all grown up and doesn’t need a bottle any more!