Paul Bunyan and the Round River Drive (Campfire Story)

One fall, PAUL BUNYAN found the finest stand of pine trees he'd ever seen. Right beside it ran a wide, deep river, perfect for floating logs down to the sawmills. Nobody knew where the river went, but every river goes somewhere, and Paul figured the mills had to be down there at the end of it.

So the crew set up camp on the riverbank and went to work. All winter long the axes rang and the saws sang. 'TIMBER!' Down came the pines. 'TIMBER!' Down came the spruce. The loggers stacked the logs on the frozen riverbank in piles as high as church steeples, and BABE the Blue Ox dragged them into place.

When spring came and the ice melted, it was time for the river drive. The loggers rolled the logs into the water, SPLASH, SPLASH, SPLASH, until the whole river was a moving floor of logs. Then they climbed on top with their pike poles and their spiked boots and rode the logs downstream, toward the sawmills.

They floated all day. They floated all night. On the third day, around a big bend, the loggers spotted a logging camp on the riverbank. It was a fine-looking camp, with a big cook shack and a long bunkhouse, and a barn big enough for an ox the size of Babe. Smoke was coming out of the chimney.

'Look at that,' said one logger. 'Somebody else has a camp up here. And they've got a stump just like the one we left by our cook shack.'

The drive went on. SPLASH! The logs bumped and rolled. A week later, around another big bend, they passed another camp. It had a big cook shack and a long bunkhouse and a giant barn, too.

'That cook's frying bacon,' said the logger. 'Smells just like our bacon.'

Two weeks later they passed another one. And three weeks after that, another one. Every camp they passed was bigger and emptier and dustier than the last, and every one had a stump by the cook shack and a giant barn out back. The men started getting nervous. 'This river sure has a lot of logging camps,' they said. 'And not a single sawmill.'

All spring they floated. All summer they floated. The logs were getting waterlogged and the men were getting tired, and still no sawmill. Then one morning, around one more big bend, there was that same camp again, its chimney cold and cobwebs on the cook shack door. Only this time, BABE was standing in the river, up to his knees, looking at it. And Babe let out a long, puzzled moo. 'BABE?'

PAUL BUNYAN climbed up on the bank. He walked over to the stump by the cook shack. Carved in the stump were three words. P. Bunyan, Boss. He'd carved them himself, the fall before.

That's when Paul understood. That river didn't go to the sawmills. It didn't go anywhere at all. It was a perfectly round river. It went around and around in one big circle, and all spring and all summer, his crew had been riding their logs past their very own camp, again and again and again.

The loggers didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so they did a little of both. Then Paul had BABE haul the whole drive out of the water and over the hill to a river that went somewhere. And from then on, whenever a new logger joined Paul Bunyan's crew, the old-timers had one piece of advice for him.

'Before you ride a river, son, make sure it has two ends.'

Storyteller tips: play the camps straight. Let the audience start to figure it out before Paul does; the giggles as they catch on are half the fun.