I was up in the Oregon Cascades with two of my cousins during the High Cascade buck season. We were spiked out on a little butte that overlooked a massive burn. We had spent a couple days glassing with nothing to show for our efforts. It was ridiculously hot that year and animals were holding tight until absolute dark.
On the third night I was awakened by wolves howling on the ridge a couple miles away. Mind you, ODFW claims no wolves live in this area at the time. Regardless, I was pretty excited since it was the first time I’d heard them.
I got out of my tent and sat on my little chair where we had been glassing from. It was a beautiful night with the slightest orange haze from distant fires that is typical for this time of year.
I sat admiring the landscape in the moonlight and faint blue of the upcoming dawn. As I sat I noticed a little white light down in a bowl below us. It was odd. The only thing in the bowl was a deep pile of blow downs. I’m talking nearly impassible, extremely dangerous, half burned blow downs. The bowl was maybe a half mile from our camp and fairly visible due to the ambient light.
The little light kept moving around erratically and looked to be floating over the blowdown timber that littered the area. As I watched it moving around I spotted two more little white lights in different areas of the burn and they to looked to be floating around erratically over areas I would deem nearly impossible to traverse in the day, let alone partial darkness.
I watched them slowly bob around until dawn when they disappeared with the arrival of daylight. I was able to glass them with my binoculars but they were literally just little, dim, white floating lights. My only thought about what it could be was maybe fireflies? As I’ve never seen fireflies I definitely don’t have any experience to compare them. Also, supposedly we don’t have fireflies in Oregon but supposedly we didn’t have wolves in the area either…