Earsplitting explosions go off all around me. Even though I’m terrified of being roasted alive, my mind remains clear and my senses keen. Perhaps this is my body’s way of anticipating new dangers. I realize the explosions are giant old trees popping apart from the heat. And then the forest leviathans start to fall.

Till now, the jungle canopy has been its own mysterious world, hundreds of feet up, glimmering in shadow. I crashed through it in the balloon, and I’ve glided over it from above, so I know it’s up there. I also understand it’s connected to the forest floor by the massive tree trunks that stretch skyward and the vines that dangle down. But the treetop realm seemed to exist in its own separate and magical space, with its own birds, animals, and insects.

Suddenly the canopy is rent as a giant tree comes crashing down. The ground literally trembles. As the old Methuselah of the forest falls, its leaves and branches crackle yellow and red in the ground flames. A family of parrots fly out of a nest and ignite in midair. Some are flash-fried. Others manage to fly on for a few seconds while burning, and then suddenly veer off and down at odd angles, screeching pitifully till they slam beak-first into the rocky ground.

Crash, a second giant tree falls, and then a third. The green jungle sky is literally collapsing down on us. Suddenly the race for survival includes all sorts of strange denizens of the high branches, most of them ill equipped for flight on land. I see them dying all around me in horrific, fleeting images as I run for my own life.

A family of monkeys leap off a branch of a fallen tree and try to stay ahead of the flames. They look terribly human as they scamper along. The youngest monkey hitches a ride on his mother’s back, but she can’t carry him at this pace. He shakes off and tries to scramble forward on his own, but the fire overtakes him.

He opens his mouth and gives a scream that is lost in the hiss and pop of wood splitting and sap steaming. And then he is incinerated in an instant as his family members run on ahead.

I see what I think must be a sloth. It’s brown and nearly two feet long, and I bet it’s graceful enough moving through the tree canopy upside down. Here on land, it’s a three-toed slowpoke—it doesn’t have a chance in this frantic footrace. As a wave of flame breaks over it and its fur catches fire, the sloth rolls on its side and screams.