The Story of Wood

A long, long time ago, people had a much easier life than we do today. They didn’t know what poverty was and they didn’t mind the lasting and cruel winters. It wasn’t that they didn’t feel cold, but they didn’t need to drag heavy carriages or carry heavy bundles of wood on their backs.

They just came into the woods in autumn, chopped down some trees and tied the trunks together with a big, strong rope. Then they took out a magical stick made of copper and whipped it in the air. The wood, all by itself, would go where it needed to go!

The wood would then walk the whole path from the forest to their village. Over hills, through valleys, in brooks, on narrow tracks and across wide roads in the fields. Nobody had to give the wood directions, it just knew the way.

When the people came back from the forest, there was wood ready for them. It was neatly piled in the village square, in their backyards and behind their simple shops. They just had sawed up the trunks and use it all year round.

Why is it no longer like that? Well, because people are people. When we’re doing fine, we’d like to be doing even better. When we’re doing better, we want it to be the best ever. In this case, the disaster was caused by a selfish woman from the village who hated doing anything that took work.

One autumn day, when it was very windy and rainy, the men chopped down the trees like they normally did, and put them side by side. Then, they could have just whipped the magical copper stick and the wood would have just travelled to the village as usual.

But - of course! -…