I believe fireflies belong in the country.
Growing up as a child in the country, summer was my favorite time of the year. One of the things needed to complete my quintessential summer was fireflies. In the country I could see them for miles, flickering above the crops. I could hear the soft rustling of the corn tassels wisp past one another. I could smell hot dirt cooling down after a rainstorm. It was my world. When you are little you don’t think about what other places consist of. You just know how yours is, and you think its special.
When I moved to the city for college, one summer night I was packing up my clothes to go home for the weekend, a usual routine for me, after classes were done for the week. I had finished gathering my stuff, and was walking to my car to put my bag inside, just as it was getting dark outside. Much to my surprise, I then noticed fireflies were flickering all around me. I always thought fireflies were special to the country and to the people who live there. At that moment I was upset and I felt like these city fireflies were trapped, and were being cheated out of the environment they belonged in. I wanted to take them back to the country with me. I was convinced that at the sight of miles of flat land they would be as relieved as I was to be home.
Since all fireflies do not live in the environment I believe they belong in, I realized that the ones who live in the country and float freely above the crops in the summer are more content.
Fireflies without a doubt can survive in the city. I can do the same. But I would only be surviving. I would be trapped and feel suffocated. The city is never really quite, even in the dead of night. There is always a siren, or car alarm sounding. The buildings pollute my eyesight, and I can never really feel at rest, no matter how many locks are on my door. No matter how many people there are I somehow always feel disconnected from them, because a part of me is missing.
The part of me that is missing is home, in the country. Home is where my family is. On a piece of farmland, where, in the dead of night, all you will ever hear is a cricket. Home is a place where you don’t have to lock your back door to try and feel safe, where all you see for miles is flat land. Home is a place where I feel free, and at ease. It is where I will be content, surrounded by fireflies.
