A Walk Through the SoBro Triangle and a Conversation About Fireflies

DRAFT FOR PUBLICATION MAY 13
ON STORIES FROM OPENSPACE 

On Tuesday, May 26, the Saratoga Torch Club will invite the community to take a closer look at one of Saratoga Springs’ most imaginative experiments in ecological restoration: the SoBro Triangle.

The evening will begin at 5 p.m. with a guided walking tour led by open space advocate and Tom Denny at the triangle itself along South Broadway. Across the street, at the Holiday Inn Saratoga Springs, Denny will continue the conversation at 7 p.m. with a public presentation carrying one of the best titles we’ve heard in a long while:

It’s memorable because it points toward something many people have quietly noticed — or perhaps more accurately, something they have stopped noticing.

Fireflies.

For generations, lightning bugs were part of summer in the Northeast. They rose from fields at dusk like drifting sparks. Children chased them with jars. Entire meadows blinked with green light. But in recent years, many people across the Southern Adirondacks and Saratoga region have experienced a strange absence. Summers pass without a single flicker.

I’ve had years lately where I never saw one at all.

That disappearance is not imaginary, and it is not trivial. Fireflies are part of a much larger ecological story involving habitat fragmentation, lawn culture, pesticide use, excessive lighting, wetland loss, and the gradual unraveling of the small interconnected systems that make life possible and beautiful.

Tom Denny has spent years thinking about those systems.

Through the work of the SoBro Conservancy and the development of the SoBro Triangle, he has helped create a living demonstration of what can happen when communities begin working with nature instead of endlessly trying to dominate or sanitize it. Native plantings, pollinator habitats, restored ecological relationships, and thoughtful stewardship can transform overlooked spaces into vibrant webs of life.

The SoBro Triangle is not simply landscaping. It is a philosophy made visible. And it arrives at an important moment.

Across the country, communities are asking deeper questions about resilience, belonging, mental health, biodiversity, civic life, and what it means to inhabit a place responsibly. Denny’s work suggests that ecological restoration is not only about birds, insects, and plants. It is also about repairing the human relationship with the living world around us.

The fireflies, in that sense, become messengers.

During the evening, participants will have the chance not only to hear Denny’s presentation, but also to help shape a much larger ongoing conversation. Either shortly before or shortly after the public talk, we plan to record an extended 90-minute Zoom conversation with Denny exploring the deeper ideas behind the SoBro initiative, ecological restoration, open space preservation, and the future of community life in the Southern Adirondacks.

That conversation will become part of Voices of the Southern Adirondacks, an evolving Smartacus storytelling project that combines public dialogue, AI-assisted editorial tools, oral history, and long-form civic journalism.

In the Smartacus Knowledge Refinery — a workflow integrating Zoom, Otter, NotebookLM, and ChatGPT — we'll transform the discussion into a polished narrative designed to preserve and extend these conversations beyond the evening itself.

That matters because too many important conversations disappear the moment they end.

The questions Tom Denny is raising deserve a longer life.

What kind of communities do we want to build? What disappears when we pave over complexity in favor of convenience?

Can small local actions restore not only biodiversity, but also a deeper sense of connection and stewardship?

And perhaps most importantly: What would it take to bring back the fireflies?

The answers may begin with something surprisingly simple — turning down unnecessary lights, planting native species, reducing pesticide use, preserving wetlands, allowing portions of lawns to return to meadow, and paying closer attention to the living systems around us.

The web of life is still there -- but it needs partners.