Distracted by Possibilities

Anything could be in there. (You can buy a print of this here: http://www.lonelyplanetimages.com/sea...)
Yesterday, Mr. Miracle and I went to see Disneynature’s new movie, Chimpanzee. (Happy Earth Day!) Since their first Earth Day release, Earth, we’ve made it a tradition to go on the holiday to see what new thing Disney made for us.
We enjoyed it very much, though it wasn’t quite the story we thought we’d figured out from the previews. The footage was breathtaking, and Oscar the baby chimp was adorable.
But this isn’t a movie review. This is a peek into how my brain works.
I was immersed in the story they presented of this lovely family of chimps in an African rainforest. Until the camera pulled back. Then they lost me.
So much green! Mist draped across the tops of the trees. Incredible waterfalls rushed down the cliffs. The canopy covered the forest floor so completely, it looked as though we could walk across the top and never fall through.
I chewed absently on the Twizzler my husband stuffed into my hand, and wondered.
What’s under there that doesn’t want us to know about it? Who lives under all that green? What walks silently behind the camera men, unseen and stealthy, watching us trying to watch them?
Three waterfalls ran side-by-side. Were there three sisters, perhaps naiads, who regulated the currents? Would they show up on camera if we caught them bathing?
The rainforests on our planet are even more mysterious and magical to me than the ocean. (Though I shouldn’t get started on what I think might be swimming around in all that watery vastness.)
Are there leftover dinosaurs in the rain forest? Birds that glow in the dark? Fish that swim in the thick, humid air? Is there a type of beetle that holds society parties to marry off their daughters? Is there a tribe of African Bigfoot that chimps worship as gods?
We don’t know what’s going on in there. We only know what the cameras catch in their brief time in the few spots on which they focus. Scientists know we’ve only begun to catalog the life teeming beneath the canopy. One of my very favorite animals, the okapi, was discovered less than 100 years ago.
There’ so much going on in there, what we don’t know greatly outnumbers what we do know.
Anything is possible.
And that’s the way I like it.