World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

It is this way with wonder: it takes a bit of patience, and it takes putting yourself in the right place at the right time. It requires that we be curious enough to forgo our small distractions in order to find the world.

When I teach National Poetry Month visits in elementary schools, I sometimes talk about fireflies to conjure up memory and sensory details of the outdoors. Recently, however, seventeen students in a class of twenty-two told me they had never even seen a firefly—they thought I was kidding, simply inventing an insect. So I asked them what they did for fun in that crepuscular-pink time just before dinner. When I was growing up, I played kickball, tag, riding bikes—anything, really, until my parents flicked on the porchlight. But the students’ most common answer: video games and movies. In other words, they were always indoors. And usually in front of a screen.

It was indeed a sad day when I had to bring up a video online to prove that fireflies do indeed exist and to show what a field of them looks like at night. Seventeen students of twenty-two had never seen a firefly. Never even heard of them. Never caught one to slide into an empty jam jar, never had one glow in their sweaty hands. This was in a suburban town where fireflies regularly crowd the edges of less-frequented roads. And it’s not just these children. The number of my students who can tell the difference between, say, a maple leaf and an oak leaf has dwindled in my college-level environmental writing classes, too. This shared decrease in knowledge about the outdoors can’t be a coincidence.

Maybe what we can do when we feel overwhelmed is to start small. Start with what we have loved as kids and see where that leads us.