Or maybe it is simply that I am looking for a reason, for something to explain all that happened. I can explain the rise of Sawgamet easy enough: all it took was a few men—my grandfather among them—with instant wealth to cause other men to flock to Sawgamet. The Yankee who gathered enough gold dust from shaking out his clothes that he bought a horse, the Chinaman who walked into town one morning with a nugget the size of a baseball, and Twelve-Foot Pete, so named because in a mining claim measuring only twelve feet by twelve feet, he unearthed enough gold to buy a thousand acres of farmland in his native Ohio. On this, dreams were made. We are experiencing another boom of sorts in Sawgamet now, with the growing war. The need for lumber—the resilient wood that comes from our forests—has increased enough to return some of the flush to this town, but I know it will not last. Sooner or later, every boom has a bust, though at least there is something tangible in these forests; I can see the trees, walk through the cuts.
