Firefly

For a few short weeks every July, as dusk sets in, fireflies emerge. They turn the woods into their darkrooms, cruising for mates by making their little butts glow as they dart to and fro.

Found in every continent but Antarctica, fireflies feature in cultures around the world. In Japan, fireflies are symbols of love, or the souls of fallen warriors. In Apache legend, fireflies are the source of fire itself, stolen for human use by a trickster fox. In India, fireflies are symbols of wisdom and enlightenment. Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore composed a collection of poems written by hand on fans and pieces of silk. The collection, Fireflies, begins, “My fancies are fireflies — / Specks of living light / twinkling in the dark.”

In a world with few universal truths, why do fireflies seem to captivate us all? Perhaps it is their transience. For us, fireflies mark the peak of summer. These days are long, but fleeting. Fall may be here before we know it, but even by August, nature’s light show will be a distant memory.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have a warm night, where you can sit in the umbras and watch their dance. If you do, perhaps you might wonder - what must it be like to be a firefly? Do they understand how much meaning they carry for humans? Or do these ephemera flitter, completely unaware that their rituals provide such beloved, evanescent joy for the titans who roam the world around them?