Stop

Far away, on the mountainside, ribbon-like brown trails appeared, snaking down the slopes and ending in the valley below, consuming the green earth as they moved. To her horror, she saw that the roads were alive and moving and coming closer every moment. She watched, bewildered.

Her mother waited until the moving roads had come close to the bottom of her little wooded hill.  Then she raised her arms and bade the writhing tongues of road to stop. But still the ugly roads came on, creeping forward relentlessly. turning all they touched to brown refuse.

Bulldozers

Mother Earth again raised her arms and cried out with words of solemn warning. Her words seemed to take the form of tumbleweeds which rolled down the slope gaining speed and size as they went until they rolled along the road and disappeared over the mountain. But the roads moved on, smothering and carrying everything in their path.  As they drew closer Meredith could see many things moving on the road, machines, cranes, bulldozers and oil rigs, tank trucks and logging trucks, earth movers and dump trucks. They were pushing the earth before them and smothering the land about them on every side. 

The land shook with their relentless progress.

Devouring the Land

In the mountains of rubble Meredith thought she could see now and then little ragged bundles, within which, it seemed to her, some weak life struggled to survive.  

Before long the machines were devouring the land around the little green copse where the quaking aspens stood, threatening to destroy the clear blue spring and this last remaining haven of untouched nature. They had come to strip the earth of her trees, to tear into her surface, remove her fuel and metal ores and cover her body with buildings, factories, roads and parking lots. Soon she could no longer breathe or live.    

SAND!

Still Mother Earth would not give way. She raised her arms once again to bar the angry, greed-possessed drivers of the machines, who were racing against each other to be the first to reach the wooded hill. Again the developers ignored her warning. 

Now she turned to the deserts of the south and raising her voice cried,

  "Give us SAND!"

And the desert rose up suddenly in massive drifts and swirled into the air, darkening the sky and moving over the little hill until it loomed above the army of machines.  The dry cloud rained down upon the trucks, bulldozers and earth movers until they were deeply buried in a mountain of sand.  

Buried Vehicles

Meredith watched dumbfounded. The sand heaps lay still and unbroken as if the ravenous band of developers had never been.  

Time passed, until at last a sand mound began to stir as though something was struggling to get out. The dark head of a driver emerged as he clawed his way out and shook himself angrily, brushing sand out of his eyes, nose and mouth. He turned and shook his fist at the pile where his bulldozer lay buried. Then he looked up at the wooded hill and shook his fist at Mother Earth and cursed her. Finally, defeated, he trudged back the way he had come.  

Soon all the sand mounds were churning and heaving desperately as the other drivers tried to fight their way clear of the sand's deadly grip. They emerged from their buried machines and trudged off in the direction of the city.

Friction

The dark clouds were gone now and the cool breeze returned.  

"Couldn't the bulldozers dig their way out?" Meredith asked the shaman.  

"Consider the nature of sand and metal," said the shaman.  

"The sand seeps into the moving parts and causes friction, and the heated engine, gears and joints seize up. Even the most powerful bulldozers can be stopped, using the way of nature," Meredith said.

"You have told it as it is," said the shaman.