SPANISH FORK, Utah — Not far from Main Street and the new houses that seem to be sprouting everywhere, grassy farm fields hold a summertime secret that thousands of people ache to see. It makes adults feel like kids again. It makes kids believe in a bit of magic.
Only a lucky few dozen get invitations nightly. And at the farm that Diane Thompson Garcia’s family has owned for five generations, they are greeted like old friends. Garcia is the guardian of the glow.
She leads visitors down a narrow trail after dusk disappears on a long June day. There often are gasps as they glimpse the first firefly of the night - for many, the first they’ve ever seen. Yet for the grown-ups who didn’t think lightning bugs existed in Utah and for the children who can’t believe such tiny, flickering creatures exist at all, Garcia is more than just a guide.
Advertisement As darkness settles, she begins to tell her story. Then the fireflies start the show. All Garcia wanted back in 2017 was for people to witness the fireflies on her Utah County farm before they were gone.
Despite her many pleas to city leaders, it seemed inevitable that the development coming ever closer to her 24-acre farm would lead to more traffic and bright lights, the kind of environment that extinguishes a firefly population forever. “I thought, I can’t fight this anymore,” Garcia recalled. “Maybe I should let people enjoy them until we lose them.
” Fireflies need dark skies to spot each other’s glow and c.
