For three sunny days Paula built her bridge. First she climbed up a dirt trail to a thicket and felled trees, some with a single blow, using entropist techniques. The Verloringers marveled, but she said, "Any idiot can hit a tree. The trick is knowing where to hit it," and that became a camp joke so that for a few days no one could break a stick or lift a bucket without declaring, "Any idiot can hit a tree."
Next she bade everyone who wanted to help her strip the trunks and carry them to a place where the rock jutted out on both sides. They erected a scaffold and carved the ends of uko trunks to a point so they could be driven into the river bottom and a small bridge built sideways between them. From this, they drove more pylons and built another arch two-thirds of the way across. Since they left the branches on the outsides of the pylons and the bottom sides of the crosspieces, leaves rained steadily into the river while they laid the roadway, made a second pair of arches atop the first, and hung supporting ropes of grass, then of sticks and finally of green branches as thick as Paula's wrist.