By Chris Worthy
Come with me on a journey. There’s a bit of magic just up ahead.
June 2018
Don Lewis’ magical Firefly Forest was as close to a fairytale wood as I have ever seen. Drive just past a blossoming small town, pass the crossroads with a country store, and follow a ribbon of highway that winds through the thick, green forest of the foothills. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turn. When I last visited, the only sign of what was to come was a literal one: a handmade, raised-letter sign to Lewis’ Wildwood Gallery, a magical place in its own right. This trip off the beaten path was well worth it though, even in daylight.
I first met Lewis more than a decade ago. I was on assignment to write about how he had just set about creating a conservation easement to preserve the 122 acres he owned in the Upstate of South Carolina. His foresight was admirable. We had our economic downturn here, much like the rest of the country in the early aughts, but thanks to a vibrant downtown in Greenville that has become the envy of other cities, an expanding international business community, and the area’s spot on “best of” lists from The New York Times to the Today Show, the real estate market has exploded almost to the point of absurdity. Protecting this patch of old growth forest seems prescient now as I return years later.
Lewis is a tall, lumbering man, strong and lean, with hands that have clearly seen hard work. In his case, that work is decades of throwing clay, using a rare technique to color and create pottery that looks and feels like the earth itself birthed it in final form. It is a technique that he learned at the hand of a master, Marguerite Wildenhain, and one that he says has not found favor among young artists. Armed with tripods and cameras – but not with an assistant – on this summer day, Lewis says he is about 20 percent done with his efforts to make videos of each step in the process of creation, preserving the method as he is preserving the wild forest. There is as much an urgency in his voice when he talks about conserving his pottery techniques as there is when discussing his work to save the natural environment around him.
“I have a very strong feeling that it will die with me,” he says of the pottery method. “Young folks today have no interest in making pottery. You can’t punch it and make noises with it.”
He laughs gently as he uses his index finger against his palm to mimic the use of a phone.
The colors of his works are a gentle mix of greens and browns and blues, calling forth everything that surrounds that home just shy of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lewis is a man of few words, but he is proud to note that as an octogenarian, he can no longer wear his Marine Corps uniform, even though he weighs just eight pounds more than he did at Parris Island when he was preparing to deploy to Korea. His chest is too broad and his arms are too strong now from cutting and hauling tons of clay.
Lewis is used to having his time guided by the world around him. Even his art is subject to the elements.
“My work schedule is determined by the pots I have made,” he says. “I’ll make a bunch of pots and if it’s raining, dreary, they will sit there for weeks drying. It if turns suddenly a sunny day like this, they dry all at once.”
During our first meeting, Lewis and I walked acres of his land. His pack of rescued dogs followed along, occasionally veering off on the scent of some unseen diversion. Every moment there felt like a gift. I was in the rarefied position of sharing time and conversation with a man who, when asked about visitors, breathes in calmly, smiles wryly, and says, “I’m a recluse,” in the same way another person might state the time of day. But during that first visit, he was literally in his element. My presence seemed secondary until he put out his hand to halt my steps. He reached down to the path in front of me and picked up an owl pellet (I would have crushed it without noticing it) and pulled it apart to expose the bones of what had become dinner for his nocturnal neighbor. It was the start of an amazing day.
As we walked, Lewis knew every rock and tree and plant, pointing out the emerging green of the endangered Oconee bell, which at that time, my suburban eyes had only seen in pictures and even then, could not identify if my life depended on it. This was his territory and I was honored to visit. But long before it was home to Lewis and his late wife, Bonnie Lee Sinclair, who had been South Carolina’s poet laureate, it was home to Phausis reticulata, the blue ghost firefly. This tiny speck of insect was the reason behind Lewis’ efforts to protect the land from development.
I got my story and much more on that first visit. My family and I returned months later, when the bare branches of the Firefly Forest had become weighed down with the vibrant green of late spring. We visited in one of the few years that Lewis opened up his gates to visitors during the short season of the fireflies. Too many cars and maybe too many voices caused him to retreat again and stop announcing the arrival of nature’s light show. What a gift that we were able to see it.
Phausis reticulata is not just any old firefly, not that a bioluminescent insect is something that should ever leave me less than spellbound. But Lewis didn’t even know this one existed when he and Bonnie Lee bought their little spot in the woods in 1975. Soon after, a visiting friend left their home, which then was just the upstairs of his studio, and then quickly returned to tell his hosts to come outside and see this sight that seemed more science fiction than reality. When blue ghost fireflies emerge as the earth warms in spring, they glow continuously, not with the flash of their more common cousins. On Lewis’ land, their habitat courses up a hillside. The forest floor becomes a wave of blue-green that leaves visitors gasping with delight.
“Just amazement,” Lewis says. “I had never before seen anything like it at all. That year, 1975, was a super good year for the fireflies. I looked out and there was a total carpet of light in every direction you could look. The fireflies were flying maybe six inches apart.”
Part two, coming soon….
Lovely!