Spirit Pouch by Stanford Vaterlaus Page A

off this trail?”
    “This is the main road.  It’s called Nevada Street.  It joins up with Lawrence Street in Central City.  Lawrence Street goes on down to Black Hawk, but we will get off at the brickyard way before that.”
    I lean out to the side to see the road ahead.  It curves gently northward into the valley before us, and in the distance Nevada Street disappears from view, totally hidden by tall, green meadow grass.  I turn and look up the valley behind us. My eyes follow the wagon wheel ruts westward into the distance toward Nevadaville.  Green meadow grass drapes the valley on both sides of the road like a sheet over old furniture, interrupted irregularly by huge mounds of bare earth, and dotted by hundreds of log cabins and log huts, which make up Dogtown.
    “What happened to all the trees?” I ask accusingly, as if the total lack of trees in the valley for as far as I can see in any direction is William’s fault.  I am already beginning to figure it out, but am not believing my own conclusion when William answers.
    “They were cut down to make houses and buildings.”
    “Holy cow!” I exclaim taking another look at the surrounding mountain tops and valley.  “The whole mountain is shaved bald.  Like a giant lawnmower just came through!”
    “A giant what?”
    “A grass cutter.”  I look at his uncomprehending face.  “Never mind.  I’m just astounded that every single tree is cut down!”
    “Yeah,” William says.  “It makes building a house really hard.  You have to go two valleys over to get logs.”
    I look at William again.  For a split second I think he is making a joke, but he is not.  He is dead serious.  I can hardly believe that he is more worried about building a house than he is about destroying the entire forest!  I am not exactly an environmentalist-tree-hugger myself, but hey, I had earned the Environmental Science merit badge, and I think it is obvious to everyone that cutting down every single tree will have a devastating effect on wildlife.  But I can see in William’s eyes that he does not understand all that.
    “It’s just that, back home in Arizona, we are taught to respect the environment.  To not damage the land.  We don’t wipe out whole forests, even for construction.”
    “I didn’t think Arizona had any trees,” William chuckles.
    I smile at the thought.  There is a lot of desert in Arizona and in some places only scrubby creosote bushes will even grow.  In Arizona’s defense I say, “Northern Arizona has the largest stand of Ponderosa Pine in the world. [17]   Arizona has trees.”  At least until the recent Rodeo and Chediski forest fires , I think.
    “I was just kidding,” William laughs.  “Hey, here is where we get off.”  He grabs his lunch bundle and leaps over the side of the wagon and lands running.  I think of my already sore feet hitting that hard and rocky ground and decide on a much more conservative approach.
    At the rear of the wagon, with my lunch bundle in tow, I roll to my stomach and push myself gently over the edge as far as I can.  Then, with a hard push, I launch myself off the back of the wagon.  Even so, the ground comes up to meet the soles of my feet with incredible speed.  I land running and even gracefully come to a full stop without crashing.  The remaining men on the wagon smile as they jostle on down the bumpy road toward Lawrence Street.
    “Jared, come on,” William says as he trots up to where I am still standing.  “We’ve got to go this way.”  He points off toward the east.
    Together we head east at a fast walk down a seldomly used road that seems to be just a mere trail.
    “What’s the name of this road?” I ask.  It is not much of a road.  In fact, it is not much of a trail, and I truly wonder if it has a name.  I also wonder just how familiar William is with this area.
    “It’s probably called Roworth Street,” William says.  Mr. Roworth owns some buildings and some land