There was a particular kind of evening in the mountains that anybody who grew up there carries somewhere in their chest for the rest of their life.
The work was done. Or close enough to done that nobody was calling you back to it. The supper dishes were put away, and the kitchen was cooling down, and the screen door had been swinging open and shut all afternoon, and now it was just open, letting whatever breeze came off the ridge move through the house on its own schedule. You sat on the porch because that was where you sat. Not because anyone told you to. Because the porch was where the day wound itself down, and the mountains took over the conversation.
The lightning bugs came up out of the grass first. Just a few and then more and then so many more such that the whole yard was blinking slow and steady like the mountains were breathing. You did not chase them when you were small because you were told not to, and then later you did not chase them because you had learned to just watch, and that was better anyway. The ridgeline went from green to blue to something that had no name. The sounds changed. Crickets and tree frogs replaced everything that had been happening all day, and the world got small and close and entirely enough.
Nobody came to get you until it was full dark.
And even then, you sat a little longer.
