These Difficult Times

Once upon a time there was a sturdy, hardworking burro who carried passengers and their baggage up and down a steep canyon. He would cross the river on a line of flat rocks and trudge up the other side of the canyon. It was hard work, and the trails on either side of the valley were long and rocky. Some days it was very hot at the canyon floor, and the burro would drink deeply from the river flowing down the valley. Sometimes, the people he carried would complain about the heat and the dust and the sun and the stink. But the burro liked his work very much. He was strong and friendly, not mean like other burros that worked the trail with him.
  Then one day as he returned to the top of the canyon, he saw something that made him very curious. There were people who were building something atop the canyon edge. It was a large block of concrete and steel. “Oh, those silly people! What will they do next?” he thought incredulously as he walked down the canyon trail, for he knew that people often do very silly things.
  The burro sniffed a flower and listened to a canyon bird sing as the sun set down over the mountains in the distance, far away.
  The next day after a long trip, as he returned to the top of the canyon, something was sticking out of the concrete block. There were spikes sticking out over the canyon, grey spikes that shone in the dusty sun. “What is that thing! Oh those silly people.”
  On the third day, he came to the top of the trail and could see what it was these silly people were building.
  It was a bridge.
  “Hah!” snorted the burro. “Those silly people. I have seen bridges like this before. Although those were much smaller than this. They put it across the river on the valley floor, and in the spring the snow from the mountains flooded down and washed it away. What a waste, bridges are!”
  He looked across the canyon and saw this block had a twin on the other side. Another big block with spikes coming out.
   Then he thought about this for a moment. “How will this bridge be washed away up here at the canyon edge?” he wondered. “This must be a different type of bridge.” He did not laugh at the people after that.
  Over the next several weeks, the people worked hard on their bridge, and the sturdy burro thought about it a lot. Every day, up and down the trail, as the construction continued and as they got closer to the other side, the more he thought about the bridge, and the more it made him uneasy.
  One afternoon, he thought to himself, “What will happen to me when people walk across the canyon on their own legs, instead of upon mine? What if they use carts and wheelbarrows to carry their bags?”
  This thought made him very uneasy, and the bridge no longer seemed such a waste, nor the people so silly. The dusty trail often crossed underneath the shadow of the bridge, and he began feeling very bad about that bridge.
  Then one day, there were no passengers anymore. No more bags. The burro train drivers stopped coming, and he stayed in his dusty field at the stable. “Why is there no work to do now?” he thought. “Why are we not going to the canyon? I miss the flowers and the birds and the sunsets. I miss drinking the cool water of the river. I miss my path up and down the canyon. Why do we not go there any longer?”
  But he never went back to the canyon. The sturdy burro died that winter in the field as the floods came crashing down the canyon valley beneath the steel bridge.