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

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

the squid feels threatened or wants to disappear, perhaps no other creature in the ocean knows how to convey that with a more dazzling yet effective show. When the vampire squid pulse-swims away, each of its arm tips glow and wave in different directions, confusing for any predator. To make an even more speedy getaway, the squid uses jet propulsion by flapping its fins down towards its mantel and simultaneously blasting a stream of water from its siphon—all of its arms in one direction. In the next stroke, the squid raises all of its arms over its head in what is called a “pineapple posture.” The underside of these arms is lined with tiny toothlike structures called “cirri”, giving an appearance of fangs ready to bite down on anything that wants to chase it down for a snack.

After that first visit in Wisconsin, I spent three years tracking blooming corpse flowers all over the world, and in that time, only one man out of dozens—one—didn’t blanch at my description of this incredible plant or disparage my enthusiasm. Only one man didn’t wince when I said the word inflorescence. In fact, this man wanted to know more. He wanted to see a corpse flower for himself. He didn’t seem fazed when I reminded him of the odor. I couldn’t believe my luck when, a few months later, over what had become our near-weekly dinner date, this handsome, green-eyed man put his fork down and said he wanted to take a road trip with me the next time a corpse flower bloomed. That it didn’t matter where it was. I knew he wasn’t joking when he said he’d go anywhere with me, and that he meant it. I’d met my match. Laughing eyes–my mom once observed after she first met him–to describe how his eyes shine at everything, how this man has a knack for making everyone around him feel pretty darn magnificent. You know, it’s very good for a man to have laughing eyes! But at that moment, his eyes weren’t laughing across the restaurant table from me. His serious face told me–through all the electric and fragrant greens, the spray and the shine of the wild bursts of fruit, the messy blood-red days and the stench and the stink too—this finally was a man who’d never flinch, never leave my side when things were messy, or if he was introduced to something new. This was a man who’d be happy whe...

Bonnet macaques reminded me how good it felt to laugh, to keep laughing in love. To make my love laugh. To let my laughter be from a place of love. The last thing I remember hearing that night was a distant meowing and chatter-like laughter, and I swear, somewhere in the backwaters of Kerala, those bonnet macaques are still having a good laugh over us—a couple trying to navigate that wild jungle, those even wilder early days of this thing called marriage.

The writing is slow but steady. My friends speak of raising chickens once this long winter is over. I wonder about alectryomancy, writing by divination. A white hen is set near a board divided into twenty-six segments. You place grain on each segment, then take down what words are spelled out when the hen eats the grain. On my worst writing days, that’s what writing a poem feels like. Only I am not the hen. I am the grain.

Maybe that is the loneliest kind of memory: to be forever altered by an invisible kiss, a reminder of something long gone and crumbled, like that mountain in Lake Superior. Perhaps, in the distant future, a sound that resembles my voice will still haunt my great-great-great-great-great-grandchild—a sound she can’t quite place, can’t quite name.

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.

A single firefly might be the spark that sends us back to our grandmother’s backyard to listen for whip-poor-wills; the spark that sends us back to splashing in an ice-cold creek bed, with our jeans rolled up to our knees, until we shudder and gasp, our toes fully wrinkled. In that spark is a slowdown and tenderness. Listen: Boom. Can you hear that? The cassowary is still trying to tell us something. Boom. Did you see that? A single firefly is, too. Such a tiny light, for such a considerable task. Its luminescence could very well be the spark that reminds us to make a most necessary turn—a shift and a swing and a switch—toward cherishing this magnificent and wondrous planet. Boom. Boom.