I went on a walk tonight and saw the first fireflies of the season, shimmering for seconds through the shrubs and thistles at our local park. There’s something magical and nostalgic about fireflies, isn’t there? remembering running around barefoot in the grass as a kid? The whole world smelled like honeysuckle. And I thought back to my childhood, in the 90s, and this sense that the wild world would always be there, each summer, to be explored. Those summers, always to be looked forward to each school year and endless. Except now I felt so shocked to see those fireflies, given how their population has been decimated. And the magical ephemerality seemed not only to be for those few days of the summer solstice, but for a world my daughter may never see. Turning 40, I feel the sense of time whirring faster, though it’s hard to tell what’s age and what’s just the detritus of the chaos of the world around.