Watching a swamp in Northern Michigan, listening to the bull frogs bloat. A heron graces low over the green water, chased by two blackbirds, red tips on their wings, defending invisible nests. I think of all the animals, including the ones too small to see. There are galaxies of beings in the marsh.

Across the lake, a radio mast towers high above the State Park. There is thunder in the distance. I imagine lightning striking the tower. Bulbs flash, hundreds of metres apart, running the full length of the structure. Despite being spaced so far from one another, they blink at the exact same time. This demonstrates the pace of electricity, I suppose - the simultaneity of a closed circuit, even if that circuit climbs miles into the sky. The tower is not miles high, but it makes me think of impossible buildings, worlds of silver and glass climbing from the swamp.

When I was younger, I couldn't think of anything more exciting than a city the size of a planet, the natural world buried under endless urban sprawl.

I'm writing about a place far from the place I am now. This often happens. We happen to different places and those places happen to us. They reoccur when we are far away. We remember the white lights climbing from the marsh, blinking at a distance from ourselves and from each other.

Driving through Montana. The telephone wires draped across the interstate looked particularly low to the ground. My perception of height seemed off. I didn't think trucks would fit under those wires, even as I knew this couldn't be true, even as I saw trucks pass beneath them without issue, headed west. I pictured myself hanging from the wires by my hands, gazing down at the road, wondering if the fall would kill me, or just shatter me from feet to hips. If I timed the drop perfectly, I could land on the roof of a passing car, sail it all the way to the coast.

Electrons move relatively slowly, I have learned, but the electromagnetic wave that carries the energy that causes the bulb to light moves almost at the speed of light itself.

A campfire is burning fifteen feet ahead of me. Occasionally, ash floats past my ear, and I look up to see if it's a pale moth. At some point, ash disintegrates to such an extent that you can say it no longer exists, but of course this isn't true. Nothing ever vanishes from this world. Nothing ever stays.