Last night we went to a campfire lecture by one of the rangers. Cindy was there, and she came over to sit beside Midge and me.
The lecture was about the redwoods and how many thousands of years it takes one to grow to full size. There are very few left as most of them have been cut down by lumber companies and sawed up into boards. I thought the talk was very interesting, and at least Cindy kept quiet while the ranger was talking. The minute he stopped, though, she began. She went on and on about how awful it was to destroy a beautiful thing like a redwood tree until I was hoping one would fall on her. Midge was tired of listening to her, too, but there wasn't much we could do unless we wanted to leave and miss the second half of the talk.
"I think they're big ungainly trees," Midge said, just to be different. "They should be made into toothpicks. Just think of all the poor people in the world who haven't any toothpicks, and these trees would supply them."
Henry Reed's Journey by Keith Robertson