The Green Sea

Polly came in from the east just after dawn, over a world made entirely of leaves. Beneath her there were no fields and no roads, only a green canopy that rolled to every horizon like a calm, endless sea. Her red head and bright green body caught the early sun, and her small round black-rim glasses misted in the warm, wet air. This was the Amazon, the largest rainforest on Earth, and from the sky it looked less like a forest than like an ocean that had learned to grow.

A rainforest is built in layers, and the top layer is the one you see from above. This green roof, the canopy, is where most of the forest lives. Sunlight lands here first, so flowers open and fruit ripens here, and most animals feed and sleep without ever touching the ground. Polly glided low and felt the heat rising off the leaves.

Through the green ran a single great brown ribbon, a river so wide that Polly had to climb higher just to see both banks. The Amazon River carries more water than any other river in the world, close to a fifth of all the fresh water that runs off the land into the sea. From the air it moved slowly, heavy with pale mud, bending in long lazy curves through the trees.

As the day cooled, the forest began to breathe. A faint mist lifted from the canopy and gathered into clouds. The forest was making its own weather. Much of the rain that falls here is water the trees themselves have released, lifted from leaf to sky and back again. Polly settled on a high branch and watched the first grey rain sweep across the green.