The search for Hidden Maryland leads into many nooks and crannies of the Free State, and sometimes it helps to have a magnifying glass with you.

So it was that I found myself with a group of summer campers in northern Harford County with nets and magnifying glasses sweeping slender spikerush grasses along a pond in search of the elusive eastern sedge barrens planthopper, more commonly called leafhopper.

This intrepid crew was led by state etymologist Jennifer Selfridge, who had come to Camp Moshava ten miles from Bel Air to pursue this rare, if tiny critter that is seldom seen anywhere but has been sighted in Maryland upon occasion.

The first sighting occurred at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in 1990. In the early 1990s, it was found in the Soliders Delight National Environment Area in Baltimore County. The insect's habitat seems to be the so-called serpentine barrens, a soil formation noted for its acidic quality and shrubby plants.

Since Camp Moshava has one of the best remaining such areas in Harford County, it seemed a natural place to search, according to Selfridge, a Brooklyn, New York native who's been working and living in Maryland less than a year.

"It's really hard to find jobs in insect conservation. There are lots of jobs in pesticide, insect control," said Selfridge, whose interest developed early. "Even as a kid, I remember putting spiders and other insect together in jars to see who's going to win, who's going to eat whom." Now, she does it for a living.

"I study all the invertebrates in the state," she explained. "It's a slow process.. I'm the only one doing this. It's a big job. Unfortunately, I'm always by myself. This is a nice treat to have a group and someone to talk to."

The camp is a hundred acres of rolling countryside, much of it forested, with the serpentine a source of curiosity to generations of campers, and a manmade pond occasionally used for canoeing that has plenty of spikerush along its banks.

To get the kids fired up, Selfridge shows them two glass cases of insects she's collected, and another variety of leaf hopper preserved in alcohol inside a test tube. Then she tries to lower expectations. "This is probably going to be disappointing," she cautions. "You really have to keep an open mind. Once you get over the fear of insects, you can spend countless hours looking for them."

Moshava is a Jewish camp with a social and environmental conscience, so the ecological treasure hunt seemed like a good fit. Kids here do pretty much the same as campers everywhere. Except that sometimes they do it in Hebrew (counselors, for instance, are madrachim). "Moshava" is the Hebrew word for a neighborhood or settlement.

Along on the leaf hopper hunt were five campers, ranging in age from 11 to 14. Three counselors tagged along behind, one playing a guitar, another a tonette and the third banging a spoon on a pot. They reminded me of the three Revolutionary War soldiers playing "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

A few days before, Selfridge had spied the tiny insect, also known as Limotettix minuendus, in Soldier's Delight. She was by herself, with no one to share her elation. All she had to show for it was the tiny insect she'd captured. At 3 millimeters in length, the plant hopper is visible to the naked eye but barely. "They'll look a lot more spectacular with a magnifying glass," Selfridge said. The insect is maroon with a greenish head and a mouth that forms into a beak that pokes into the stems of plants to eat the juices.

She had brought the tools of her trade--several nets and a few magnifying glasses--to Moshava. Counselor Bob Gould, 20, the guitar-strummer, who is wearing an Orioles cap, says the nets remind him of those used in lacrosse.

"Is this going to be an important discovery?" asks Ethan Weissbaum, 14. "If we find it, we get to be millionaires," says Gould.

The expedition descends a long, rocky trail to the pond. The campers immediately find insects, just not the leaf hopper. "You guys, here's one dragon fly with two bodies," says Rafi Friedman, 11, excitedly. The insects were mating. "If you see something interesting, can you keep it?" he wanted to know.

"I don't see any problem collecting one or two. That would have no impact on the population," Selfridge says, adding, "I'm just not seeing any leafhoppers at all. It might be endemic only to Soldiers Delight. You take a chance doing this. But anytime you let kids loose with a net, it seems like they're going to have a good time."

Indeed they were, even though they weren't finding the sought-after Limotettix minuendus. "This is so much better than sitting in front of the TV or playing videogames," Selfridge said, citing two activities that are off-limits at Mosh.

Sweeping the grass, Rafi swoops up a damsel dragonfly still in the aquatic nymph phase. "That's a good catch," Selfridge tells him. "They almost don't look alive because they are such weak fliers at this stage."

The campers still want the leafhopper, "to tell everyone back at camp," Rafi says. "I want to feel I've achieved something," says Ethan. "You have achieved something," Selfridge assures him. "Even though we didn't find it here today, we learned valuable information knowing where it isn't. This is really good, useful survey work."

The afternoon is getting on. Although the hunt has lasted only a little over an hour, the counselors are signaling that time is up, that there are other unspecified activities on the camp schedule requiring them to stop the hunt.

Then Ahiad Danziger, 24, a camp counselor from Israel who was wielding a net, exclaims: "What's this?" Selfridge peered into the net and said, "Ooh, it's leafhopper. Let's collect him. We have a leafhopper." It is small, but "too big to be rare, but, oh, it's a beautiful one," she says. Camper Ethan is simply in awe. "It's amazing how something so small is so important," he says.

"We wish more people would think like that," the state etymologist said. "The world would be a better place."

They haven't found the rare species of leafhopper, but in the end it doesn't matter one bit. The campers have learned that "something so small" could be "so important." And as Selfridge herself said, "It's hard to have a bad day in the field."