The Big Waters

Most of the ground we live on is not ground. Look at a picture of the round stone from above the air: most of it is blue. For each ten parts of the surface, about seven parts are the big waters.

Why they taste like salt

For a thousand thousand years and more, water has gone down from the ground into the big waters, carrying very small amounts of salt from the stone it went through. When the sun makes the water hot, the water goes up into the sky — but the salt cannot go up. It has been left behind, a small amount at a time, for a very long time. That is all salt water is: water that has taken in the ground's salt, a small amount at a time, from before there were animals.

The top and the bottom

The top of the big waters is not flat. Moving air pushes on it and makes the water move in long lines that go up and down. On some days the top is smooth like a floor; when the air moves hard, the moving lines become higher than houses, and a boat far from the ground on a day like that is in a very bad place. And two times each day, all the big waters go up the sides of the ground and back down — it is the white circle in the sky pulling them.

The big waters go down much lower than the highest ground goes up. Far down, light from the sun has not been — not one time. It is black and cold, and all that water presses down, very, very hard. There are living things down there: fish that make their own light, and animals that no person has seen. People know the white circle's surface better than the bottom of the big waters.

The boats

For most of the time there have been people, people could not fly — but they could go on water. They cut trees and made boats, and went out: first near their own ground, then far, then all around the ground. Most things that go from country to country go by water to this day, in boats as long as ten houses put end to end. The things you own have often been inside one.

The sound

Sit by the big waters and hear them. They were moving like this before there were animals, and they will move like this after. The sound they make on the ground has not stopped for a thousand thousand thousand years. No sound on the ground has been here longer.