Alison Swallow
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil reads like a song, lyrical, and lovely. I could easily write a response to the entire book, but the chapter on fireflies held such resonance for me that I found myself coming back to it over and over again.
I spent five years in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the Great Smoky Mountains are essentially in your backyard, and I remember looking forward to the fireflies each summer with childlike anticipation. They were like little flashes of magic, dancing, and floating amongst the trees that stood by the creek behind my house.
Much like the author, I had initially been unsure about moving to the Southeast. I had grown up in Nevada, and the people, the culture, even the environment of Tennessee seemed so strange to me when I arrived. When those little green sparkles appeared in the evening sky that first summer, however, I decided to give it a chance.
Fireflies are, of course, actually just bioluminescent beetles, as the author gently reminds us, but that is the great beauty of this book. Nezhukumatathil seamlessly weaves the science of the natural world together with a sense of magic until you could almost believe that the two coexist.
When the time came for me to move back to my hometown of Las Vegas to begin my job at DRI, I didn’t mind trading in tall magnolias for scrubby sagebrush or flowering dogwoods for spiky creosote. There is something so deep and beautiful about standing under an enormous Southwestern sky filled with twinkling stars that you can almost forget everything that has come before. I am happy and content in my desert home.
But I have never and will never stop missing the fireflies.
“I know I will search for fireflies all the rest of my days, even though they dwindle a little bit more each year. I can’t help it. They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again.” -from World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
Alison Swallow has been a Project Coordinator on DRI’s Administrative Team since March of 2019. Her primary focus for the Institute is government affairs, but she also works in event planning and communications. She is a proud third-generation Nevadan, with a passion for science, education, and the arts.