The long-burning natural gas fires at Chimera, near the town of Cirali, Turkey. This miraculous place will be the subject of another post but I just wanted to add at least one photo of several of the 20 or so flaming gas vents that have been burning continuously for at least 2,500 years, fueled by methane seeping out of the fissures in the rocks here.

Photographing the natural gas-fueled fires at Chimera near Cirali, Turkey one early April night in 2018, I saw motion in my headlamp that revealed a large scorpion about 4 inches (10 cm) long. And since I now always carry a UV flashlight with me whenever I travel, I was able to capture the fluorescing beast with my camera.

While that was pretty cool in its own right, simply because I hadn’t expected to see any scorpions in Turkey (much less a large one), what was the best about this particular event was showing this off to several other travelers who were also at the fires that night. First I went over to a couple of people who looked like they probably spoke English, which they did indeed because they were from Denver, Colorado. Neither one of the young couple had ever seen a live, wild scorpion before, and they were completely unaware of the fact that scorpions fluoresce under UV lights. To watch their amazed reactions was enjoyable, as was helping them to take photos similar to mine with their phones to show the folks back home.

Next, I summoned over another couple whom I had spoken to earlier in the evening since we both arrived around dusk. The young woman wore dreadlocks and a tie-dye dress and was from Missouri, while her older male companion was a German whom she had just met earlier that day. They had gone to sit by one of the fire vents a couple hundred feet from the ones John and I had staked out, and were roasting something over the flames. I approached and said, “Sorry to bother you guys, but I want you to see something. I don’t want to tell you what it is yet, but I’m betting it will blow your mind.” Curious, they got up and eagerly followed me down to my eerily glowing surprise. The woman in particular was stunned by what she was seeing, and had a dozen questions about scorpions, how dangerous they were, and why did they glow like this? The German man also did not know that scorpions did this and was impressed. More phone photos were taken, and thanks given that I’d interrupted their dinner.

The final group still up at the fires were four young Turkish people in their mid-20s. I actually had originally mistaken them for Russians, but in my defense it was virtually dark when they arrived and we didn’t speak at all, so it was a bit strange of me to go over to their fire vent and try to communicate what I wanted to show them. Since they spoke very few words of English and I spoke zero words of Turkish, I went up there prepared with my flashlight and my camera, showing them this photo on my display screen and indicating with beckoning hand motions and pointing to the image that they should come down the hill a way and see this remarkable thing. I didn’t want to appear too crazy, just as slightly crazy as some American dude who couldn’t really communicate to them yet wanted them to follow him might appear. It worked and three of the four came down the hill, and they oohed and aahed at the ghostly bluish white arthropod in front of them. For illustrative purposes, I flashed my normal white light headlamp across the tan critter and then did the same with the UV light, showing them the startling color differences. And yes, they too took phone photos.

One of my photos of the scorpion in question. It measured about 4 inches/10 cm in length, and was similar in appearance to the Arizona giant desert hairy scorpion (Hadrurus arizonensis) although clearly this Turkish type is a different species, and possibly much more toxic than the Arizona ones I see annually.

This story is illustrative of one reason why I like to travel and interact with people and places outside of my normal range of experiences on occasion. By reaching out beyond my typical comfort zone to encourage them to see what I had found, I felt like I was able to provide each of these individuals with a travel memory of their own that they didn’t expect at a place that is very unique in its own right. (I mean, there aren’t that many places where you can witness methane fires coming directly out of the ground! Now add glowing scorpions to that already incomparable setting….) It was a pleasure to watch their amazed reactions and to be able to do some education while also enabling them to take some intriguing photos and develop a cool story that they can share with their various friends and families back at home. And in doing so, I made photos, a story, and memories of my own!