Story Behind The Song

"I wrote this right in the beginning stages of a relationship, and it was one of those songs that just came to me all at once. I was at a festival in Michigan and I think I was even staying in a tent, and I just wrote it down in a journal. I guess it reflects that big, expansive sense of life and overwhelm that comes from being outdoors.

Lyrics

moonlight and fireflies, everything beautiful
I'd be scared of beautiful if beauty wasn't true
so many open skies - how my head is spinning...I
can see my own reflection in the fear of missing you

*don't you see everything points upward
can this be another sign I should be touching down
I was once the epitome of stubborn
but now I'm not sure enough to be so certain...be so certain

when will this slow volcano of ambition
cease boiling over with endless misery
'cause being so driven has never been fulfilling
and I barely lived my life until you captured me*

moonlight and fireflies, hippies by the oceanside
I used to make fun of them and laugh at liberty
'cause I knew my own heart was swinging like a pendulum
away from what was obvious and toward some destiny

but destiny's a foggy night and destiny's a hotel room
and destiny's pneumonia with both hands wrapped around your heart
and oh you found me shivering, you found me unraveling
you found me hovering above the hardest part

so fireflies and moonlight are nothing and everything
and everything and nothing is brand new to me now
'cause I have wandered aimlessly avoiding every victory
as though it'd be the death of me, as though it'd leave a scar*