Chapter 7: Steve Goes Hiking and Enjoys the Scenery
After taking everything he needed – his tools and torches – he went hiking to the mountains that surrounded the beautiful valley. Walking on grass, Steve was thinking about how beautiful and full of wonder the world around him really was. Flowers, grass, animals – everything seemed so nice and appealing.
Struck by all this beauty, Steve was approaching the mountains when the view got even more breathtaking, thanks to the multitude off small waterfalls, with water pouring right off the cliff and flowing to a small pond. There were many birches growing near the pond, and under them there were mushrooms of two kinds: the grayish-brown ones and the red ones, with white specks. Carefully harvesting them with his scissors, Steve put them in his pocket, feeling excited about making a wonderful mushroom soup out of them later.
Suddenly Steve felt a strong desire to take a bath in the pond. He removed his clothes, arranged his hiking gear on the grass nearby, and went into the water. It was very warm, almost hot, because of the great amount of sunlight heating it up during the day. After swimming across the pond a few times, Steve got out of the water.
Lying down on the soft, dry grass so that he could get dry himself, he thought about adding the finishing touches to his house. He had to insert some glass into the window opening, craft a chimney, construct a bed, and finally, complete the porch by adding a canopy to it. He started thinking hard, trying to figure out the types and amounts of resources that he needed, because he wanted to start gathering them right away so as not to waste time and effort. After a while, Steve got a headache. He got up, put his clothes back on, and gathered his things, and then started walking toward the mountain a little to the left of the pond, intending to conquer it. As he was climbing higher and higher, he was carving out little steps along the way, to make climbing up and down a little easier. After reaching the top, he sat down to catch his breath next to a small oak that was growing there, and started looking around. He saw a completely different landscape before his eyes: a mountain down below, and the sea behind it that was surrounding the valley as well as the mountains. After getting enough of the wonderful and unusual view, Steve decided to climb down.
While climbing up and carving the steps, Steve didn’t notice one small pathway inside the rock. Now that he was climbing down, the small pathway became more noticeable, and Steve decided to explore it. Just as he expected, the pathway was leading to a cave. After arranging a few torches on the walls, he started mining stone and minerals, namely iron and coal; somehow there was an abundance of these resources, despite the cave’s small size.
“I wish I could create a device that could produce unlimited cobblestone quantity to make my work so much easier. Mining in the actual caves is so difficult and dangerous! It would make it unnecessary to go so far away from home and risk my life JUST to get some cobblestone.” Unfortunately, it was just a dream that he had, way too far from reality. In spite of his natural inventiveness, Steve didn’t know the first thing about building such a device.