Mist, Ash and a Blue Bottle: Mood and Tone

Text A: Morning on the Canopy Walk

The mist had not yet lifted when we stepped onto the bridge. Below us the forest breathed slowly, a green sea rising and falling with the wind. Somewhere a bird called, three clear notes, and another answered from far away. Nobody spoke. Drops of water slid from the leaves and fell, without a sound, into the green below. When the sun finally touched the tops of the trees, the whole forest seemed to sigh and wake.

Text B: The Hillside after the Fire

Nothing moved on the hillside. Where the trees had stood, black stumps pointed at a grey sky. The ground crunched underfoot, and every step raised a small cloud of ash. A smell of burnt wood hung in the air and clung to our clothes. There were no birds. There was no wind. Only, far down the slope, a thin line of smoke still rose from something that had not finished burning.

Text C: Souvenir

Thank you, kind visitor,
for the bottle you left by the path:
so blue, so shiny!
The monkeys have never seen
anything so modern.

Thank you for the wrapper
in the waterfall's pool.
It dances so prettily,
round and round in the current,
for a hundred years.

Come again soon.
The forest will remember you.