The Third Daughter of the Family

The Third Daughter of the Family

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From far away, from so high up it looks so peaceful. I mean look at her: a tiny little blue speck on the vast black canvas. You can barely recognize her, I can understand, but I can see her so clearly. Well, she is my sister after all. She is called Earth.

She is a little wider than me and a little further away from father Sun. It’s only because we have our places in the system. But I got to admit she is one of the most beautiful children of our family.

She is about four and a half billion years old. So young! She has bright and highly contrasting features with a brilliant blue halo around her. She is surrounded by some intoxicating mixture of gases that rises almost hundreds of miles above her surface. The white fluffy things floating about are the clouds. I will tell you about their beauty later. Go a little closer and you can see a beautiful collage of blue, green, yellow, red and white, all shining together smiling like a bride.

A little further down will show you that those bright colors are not paint or make up but her varied topography. The blues are the deep oceans that cover three fourth of her surface. They are profound and bountiful. You can call them her treasure chest. She wants to hide something she puts it in there. Once I had asked her why she does that. It would take someone long time and diligence to find them and the things are really precious. She had winked and had smiled saying, that’s the idea.
Then the green patches that shone through the oceans were the land masses. And what won’t you find there: tall mountains, swirling rivers, green vegetation, vast planes, dense forest, hot deserts and much more.

When she was born there was a single land mass surrounded by water on all sides. She was very young then. We had just cooled down, slowly settling into our orbits. Then, gradually, the land mass broke into pieces and started to drift away from each other.
She looked happy. It was like having a new face, you know, like a make over. The seasons changed, climate changed and so did the nature on her.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Once, a huge object collided with her. Honestly I was shocked when that happened and was scared that she might break into pieces. But she is my sister. She held on losing only a little chunk of her bulk. But even that too didn’t go far. It got caught in her gravitational pull and still goes around her. She lovingly calls it the Moon.
Well, now let me take you to the surface.

She has different moods. Sometimes she is gentle, sometime very hot. Sometimes she is weeping and sometimes she is so cool. She is normally hot when she is facing our father, the Sun. Well, the Sun is really a ball of fire and it really heats up anything facing him. It dries her lands and evaporates her waters that remain in her atmosphere as vapors. When she slowly moves a little away she cools down. The water vapors condense and come down to her surface as rain. I say she is crying but she says she’s just taking a shower. Well, then when she is furthest away from father winter sets in. It’s cold and at some places the water freezes up into ice. Even the rainfall gets converted into silent snowfall.

As she grew older the landmasses started to take shape and steady themselves. They were scattered all over her with different curious shapes and sizes with seas and huge water bodies in between them. She named them the continents. The two pieces that drifted towards the poles got covered in white snow and remained frozen around the year. It’s like she is wearing white caps.

The places that were bordered by the oceans became shores. Area further away from them became dry and rocks started to break down into sand. Gradually they turned into deserts. Then there were the mighty mountains like crowns on her head. These are places on the surface that are higher than most their surroundings. Sometimes they are not very high and are covered by evergreen trees. The few that are high have snow covering the treetops. There are some that go so high that they are always covered in heavy snow and they never melt. Sometimes they grow so tall that they penetrate through the clouds. She says they are very curious, always peeping through the cover.

Then there are rivers. These are channels of water flowing down from one place to another. The source could be anywhere but mostly they have their homes in the snow-clad mountains. As the weather becomes hot the snow melts and the streams are formed. They travel all along the land and empty themselves in the oceans. They are like veins over her body.

I remember when life first came to her. She was overjoyed. I was the first to know, of course. We sisters are very close. She was crying. It was underwater, in her treasure chest, that life started to form. She had been stable for years now, her temperature was moderate and the atmosphere had become suitable for life.

Slowly the tiny little life started to diverge and crawl out of water into land and finally air. Crashing Comets! Wasn’t there some diversity! First one to come was the vegetation. There were grasses, trees, flowers and fruits. They were green and unmovable, firmly rooted to the ground, peacefully swaying to the winds. I asked her, why couldn’t they move. She said it was so that other could find them easily. I didn’t understand that until the animals came into being. Inside a few millions of years her oceans were teeming with so many different kinds of animals and none looked nothing like the other. Then there was the land animals, big and small to tiny, fat and slim, some with long fat tails while some had none. They were insects, vertebrates, non-vertebrates, mammals and birds. They were all happily munching on the green leaves of the plants and trees that had come before them. Then some of them ate other animals. I asked, what kind of brutality was that? She said it’s the balance of nature.

Then as years passed some of the species started to die and pass away in the natural disasters. When the continents moved to adjust them to comfort themselves they caused earthquakes, when the molten rocks came out to the surface they caused volcanoes, when the clouds shed their heavy loads they caused floods. Life started to become extinct. I got worried. She just smiled and said that it’s the law of nature. Only the fittest one would survive.
She was right. As time moved on, as climate changed, the species started to evolved. And those who couldn’t, perished. Had all of them survived my sister would have to hire places on me.
Well, evolution took its own path. So many beautiful plants, trees, animals and birds nature created. My sister looked more and more beautiful every day.

The latest one to evolve is the human. Well, sometime I wonder. They are smart, intelligent and very curious. They want to know everything. What the air is made up of? What is at the core of the planet? Whether other planets have life on them? How hot is the sun? Sure, I can tell you that. My dear nephews and nieces, your grandfather is hot enough to burn your finger. They even send peculiar looking machines here and there.

But they make me sad. They fight so much. Other animals fight too but these humans go out of control and it is not because of the laws of nature. But then siblings fight, I guess.
What hurts me most is that they exploit my good sister. They don’t realize the rich and generous resources of Earth will end one day. Their mother would die and they would have nothing left with them. They dig into her crust, pollute her stunning oceans, do irreparable damages to the atmosphere and worst of all there is no one to stop them. I asked her, why doesn’t she do something about it? She smiled and replied that all her wealth is for her children. And besides, nature had always found a way. It always will. We are not to interrupt because we are all a part of it.

Well, that’s the third daughter of Sun, your ever-forgiving Mother and everyone’s dear old Earth.




P.S: Sorry. I didn’t introduce myself. I am Aunt Venus, the second daughter, the evening star on Earth’s sky.