Paul Bunyan and the Popcorn Blizzard (Campfire Story)

Most of the stories about PAUL BUNYAN happen in the winter, when the snow was deep and the logs slid easy. But the loggers never forgot one summer, because it was the strangest summer of them all.

It started out HOT. Then it got even more HOT. By July it was so HOT that the loggers fried their eggs on the heads of their axes. It was so HOT the river ran backwards looking for some shade. It was so HOT that the chickens laid hard-boiled eggs, and the cows gave milk that was already turning into butter.

Even BABE the Blue Ox was suffering. He lay in the river all day with just his nose sticking out, and when he stood up, the whole river went with him.

Now, right beside the camp, PAUL BUNYAN had planted a cornfield, so the cook would have corn for the winter. It was the biggest cornfield anybody had ever seen, stretching all the way to the horizon. The corn had grown tall and dry in the sun, with fat yellow kernels on every ear.

One afternoon it got so HOT that the loggers heard a strange little sound coming from that cornfield.

POP.

Then another one. POP. Then a whole bunch at once. POP! And then the entire cornfield started popping, every kernel on every ear, POP, POP, POP! White fluffy popcorn shot up into the sky, and the WIND caught it and blew it all over camp.

It came down like a blizzard. It covered the bunkhouses. It piled up in drifts against the cook shack. It filled the roads so deep that the loggers had to dig tunnels to get to supper. In ten minutes the whole camp was buried in popcorn, white as a snowy morning in January.

And that's when the trouble started. The oxen and the mules looked out of the barn and saw all that white stuff piled up everywhere. They had never seen popcorn before. As far as they knew, it was snow. So they started to shiver. Their teeth chattered. Icicles formed on their noses. Before long every animal in camp was shaking so hard the barn rattled, and it was still the middle of July!

Even BABE got goosebumps, and a blue ox with goosebumps is a pitiful sight.

PAUL BUNYAN didn't waste a minute. He hauled out every wool blanket in camp and wrapped up the oxen and the mules. He hung earmuffs on the horses. He knit Babe a scarf eleven miles long. And he had the cook make cocoa for every animal in the barn, until they all warmed up and stopped shivering.

The loggers, of course, thought it was the best day of the summer. They had popcorn fights. They built popcorn men with pinecone noses. They went sledding down the popcorn drifts and ate their way back up. The cook made popcorn balls for a month.

When the weather finally cooled off, the popcorn blew away on the WIND, and the north woods went back to normal. But the old loggers say that if you're ever in the woods on a really HOT day and you hear a little POP somewhere in the trees, you'd better grab a blanket. Just in case.

Storyteller tips: start the POP cue slow and quiet, then speed it up until the whole campfire is clapping and shouting. If you brought popcorn, toss a handful into the air at the blizzard. Pick it up afterward; Leave No Trace still applies to popcorn.