When I was about 13 or so, my family was camping in the woods behind the house (something we often did in summer) on the 4th of July. Probably 10 of us or so... grandparents, my mom, me, aunts, uncles, friends, etc. We'd been debating all that day about leaving that night to go and watch fireworks somewhere. In the end we decided against it and my mom was MAD, lol. She was the one hold out that wanted to go watch the fireworks.
Around about 11pm we decided to take a "midnight walk" down our lane which lead from the woods campsite, past a pond, and opened into a corn field and overgrown vineyard on one side, and an alfalfa field on the other. As we were walking we noticed a sort of green glow ahead but I guess we just thought it was the moon reflecting off the mist... it was hot and humid with the moon rolling in and out amongst heavy cloud cover.
We rounded the bend in the trail and all of our mouths just fell open. In the overgrown vineyard, there was not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of lightening bugs (fireflies). I don't know if it was 5 minutes or 2 hours but not a word was spoken as all of us just stared at that once in a lifetime sight. The entire vineyard was illuminated a yellow green to where you could count fence posts even without the moon in the dead of night. We stood there staring and saying nothing until the show was over and the firefly numbers dropped down to that of a normal night.
The first person to break the silence was my grandmother, who asked my mother if she still regretted not going into the city to see the fireworks.
It's been almost 30 years since that night, but it's still a 4th of July I'll never forget.