The Forest Breathes

Morning came soft and grey, and Polly knew it was time to go. The whole forest was steaming. As the sun warmed the wet leaves, mist rose off the canopy in a thousand slow threads and gathered into low clouds. The forest was breathing out. Polly shook the rain from her blue-teal wings, climbed into the cool air, and looked once more at the green sea she was leaving.

From high up she could see what the forest was doing. All that rising mist was water, lifted from the leaves into the sky. It did not just stay overhead. Great rivers of it move through the air and carry rain far to the south, to fields and cities the forest will never see. Cut the forest down, and the rain goes quiet far away.

Below her the brown river ran on, carrying the forest's water the other way, toward a sea very far off. Water above and water below. The trees and the river moved the same rain in two directions. Nothing here lived alone. Everything was joined to something larger.

Polly flew east, toward the distant ocean. She climbed until the canopy was one soft green skin over the world. Behind her, the Amazon went on breathing and raining on itself, as it had for longer than anyone could count. She did not look back. Some places you carry with you.