Bethanie Cassard The Incredible Journey

The Incredible Journey Bethanie Cassard

It all started a long time ago, before humans existed, before Antarctica was a frozen tundra. In fact, that’s where our little story begins, in Antarctica. Before it froze over, that area was another ocean. In this ocean lived a sad little droplet named Mark. He was sad because he thought, “I can’t do anything, I’m not special or important, there are millions of droplets and I am no different from any of them.” Little did he know, he was different; they all were. None of them would take the same path. But they had to start somewhere and, though Mark did not realize, this is where his amazing journey began! When he was created, Mark was put in an ocean that was not meant to last, but this doesn’t mean that he disappeared along with it. He moved fast and free, nothing or no one to control him. It was quite warm, which made it easier to move about. But one day, the ocean got cooler and continued to do so. Mark started to slow down, eventually slowing so much that he could no longer move! He’d gone from a droplet in an ocean to an ice crystal in a frozen iceberg. He stayed cold and solid for millenniums until the iceberg started to melt, break away, and drift south. As the ice boulder floated itself into warmer water, Mark returned to his liquid state once again and became one with a new ocean. However, Mark had little time to get used to this new area, because this area was hotter than his last. It was so hot that Mark evaporated into a gaseous state, traveling high in the atmosphere, where he joined other vaporized water droplets like himself. Together, they formed a huge cloud and sailed across the sky, collecting as many water

vapors as they came across. “The view is SO much better from up here,” Mark thought. “I’m gonna stay up here forever!” In cloud form, Mark and his new cloud mates traveled far and wide, gaining vapors left and right. But as they grew the cloud bigger, they made it denser and heavier. Soon, they were at crawling speed and losing altitude. The sudden change in pressure compacted them slightly, yet it was enough to pack some together enough to return to liquid form. Mark was one of

the unlucky ones and took shape once again, whilst free falling to the surface of the earth. When he hit, he was luckier than the majority of those that fell with him; he landed in a small tributary while the others landed on the ground. Mark had never moved so fast in his life, it was such a rush! All of a sudden, he moved slower, not by much, but enough to be noticeable. That’s when he noticed he was in the river. As he flowed downstream dreaming of reentering the ocean, he spotted a person kneeling on the riverbank. He was a hiker who stopped to refill his canteen. As Mark neared the hiker, a little whirlpool appeared next to him, flinging him directly into the canteen. It was dark and cold and the only light that came through was at the canteen’s opening. As Mark looked at the light above, it went out, the canteen in motion, and suddenly Mark experienced ingestion.

He was just about absorbed into the hiker’s system when he felt himself being pulled upward and mixed with a little salt. The hiker twisted his ankle by stepping in a fairly deep pothole covered by leaves and was trying not to cry out loud, but the tears came anyway, providing an escape route for Mark to reenter the world and not a digestive system. Falling from the hiker, Mark lay waiting to be evaporated, hoping to become a cloud once again to soar above the world. As he evaporated, a breeze blew him to a region that was not too far across the world, where morning was breaking the horizon. The morning was cool and the area was warm, making perfect conditions for dewy grass. However, Mark ended up on a car window in a parking lot next to the field instead. Either way, it was something new to experience and he enjoyed every moment he was away from major bodies of water. With the sun high in the sky and no major heat significant enough for evaporation, Mark worried he’d never get to glisten on the grass in the sunrise like he’d seen that morning. Night approaches and still Mark sits on the window, until the humidity rises and more condensation forms on the glass around him. Droplets merge with him, making him too heavy to stay stationary, and he starts to slide downward with the pull of gravity. Excited that he’ll be on the grass by morning, he slides happily downward, and stops all of a sudden. He looks around to see where he has landed, only to find that the place he’s in is so much better than the grass: Mark has landed on an intricately designed spider web. The sun rises and he looks for other webs to see how he might look; needless to say, he’s much happier to be on the spider web than the grass. Mark likes this new, adventurous life cycle,