Whew

 At the end of May and into early June, a friend and I went to Tennessee and Kentucky to see the synchronous firefly display at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and we took a week to do it and drove around the area, staying at a restored Shaker village and at a wonderful B&B on Lookout Mountain above Chattanooga, among other places.

And we went on a guided hike inside the park to see the fireflies.  This isn't just a few random fireflies flitting around your backyard, it's thousands of them, and they flash together - that's the "synchronous" part.  It's astounding, and it only happens at this one time of year - a mating ritual, and it's wonderful to see.  We met up with our group (ten or twelve people) and went to the park.  First the guides made a campfire and we all sat around snacking on the provided crackers, cheese and sausage and having S'mores.  

And when it started getting towards dusk, we hiked up the mountain trail to a spot known to our guides, unfolded our portable chairs and sat down and waited.  As it grew darker, more and more fireflies appeared, until we were surrounded by waves of flashing dots among the trees.  It's truly an amazing sight to see; go if you have a chance.

Then, as we got up to walk back to the parking lot - well, it was close to midnight by then, and completely dark, and as we walked the trail in the dark (we were using flashlights with red lenses so as to disrupt the nocturnal wildlife as little as possible, I fell - hitting my right knee on a rock and ending up in a nice little muddy area on the trail.  A couple of nice guys in the group helped me up, and I mentioned to the guide that I'd had two inner-ear surgeries that caused what I had regarded as just minor issues with equilibrium.

And it's true.  Mostly I don't notice it at all, but if I'm particularly fatigued - I'm thinking now of when we were walking through the terminal at Schiphol airport after a long and sleepless night flight, and I had to focus to avoid looking as though I were drunk.  

But an uneven mountain trail in the complete dark?  That was a whole other thing.  Turns out that my coping strategy for the equilibrium issues caused by my implantation surgeries was me staying focused on where I'm walking - if I'm tired and I even just try to look at something other than where I'm going, I can feel a bit wobbly, and in the dark - in the dark, I WILL fall.  As I learned the hard way.

It's not a big thing - even my leg only hurt for a day or so - and now that I've learned this, I can make sure that I have a light when it's needed.  For the most part, it's not, because it's very rarely truly dark in towns and cities, and even in my yard at night we have security lights so if I leave the house, there's some light.  But if I know I'm going to be somewhere in the dark, I can plan for it.  I also bought a set of trekking poles, which might help.

It's indicative of how rare it is to be trying to walk around in true darkness when I only figured this out eight years after the surgery, but here we are.  And hopefully here we won't be again, because I really don't feel the need to be wiping out when I walk.