of the BLUE SNOW
A.K.A. YEAR OF THE TWO WINTERS
The Winter of the Blue Snow was an atmospheric
anomaly with little precedence or explanation. This photograph is a
picture of a light blue snow that occurred decades later. It was
extremely mild compared to the one Bunyan faced, the likes of which have
never been seen since.
THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO LEARN Y'SELF, to even begin to understand who Paul Bunyan was and all, the first thing one need know is whenabouts he lived. Lumberjacks they get to fightin' about this and that and all things Paul. But ain't nobody doubt that Paul lived and logged during the “Winter of the Blue Snow.” See, that winter, now, that was a season. Oh, I tell ya, it was so cold, the snow when it fell, so cold it fell blue. Then a logger, well, he take a seat and when he opens his mouth his words, they just freeze solid. And, when his words ice-up, they just hung there stiff. And, you ain't heard nothin' more of 'em 'til the spring thaw.
Well, it's like I told ya, ain't nobody say Paul was not in the thick of it. Still, there were some that might could forget to mention him, givin' all the other goings on:
“This winter puts us in mind of the winter of the blue snow in Wisconsin. It came on suddenly just as it did this year. The snow fell softly and gently, taking the blue out of the sky with it until the whole earth was covered with blue snow. We were working in a logging camp then. It was a large camp, so big that the pancake griddle was half a mile long. We used to tie a side of bacon to each one of the cook's feet and let him skate back and forth to grease the griddle. The batter was mixed in a mortar mixer and sent to us frozen and baled. That was a great winter. The face of nature froze and peeled off. The finger of time was so numbed with the cold that it couldn't point with pride. It froze the toe nails off of the foot of the hill, and paralyzed the arms of Morpheus. Timber split with the frost that winter. A teamster was sitting on a log drawing it to the river when it exploded with the cold, catching a part of his sheepskin clothes as the crack in the log closed again. The log was fortunately hollow and he had noticed as he loaded it that the pitch had hardened as it ran down the center of the tree, so he lit a match and tied it to his whip cracker, setting the pitch on fire. The movement of the team gave it a good draft and the poor man thawed himself loose before he got to the landing place. How fortunate that it was a hollow log.”
— E. N. Baily, [Untitled], The Leon Reporter, January 12, 1905, vol. XXX, no. 21, Leon, Iowa
Still, I'll be a son of a snallygaster if that ain't Paul's camp Mr. Bailey's was just talkin' 'bout. Yes sir, down to that big ol' griddle, the one what requires to be skated just to get greased up, skates being of pork, no less.
Now, Paul's whereabouts, now, they're anybody's guess when the blue snow hit. I heard, and I'll cite my source as that omniscient “they,” you know as in “they say.” Well, anyway they say Paul, he, fought through the Winter of the Blue Snow when he logged off North and South Dakota. Now, for those who ain't got no foot for travel, there ain't no other region today that got more in one place than them Dakotas, ya know what I'm sayin'? That big ol' place, well, it makes up for what it lacks, that is to say forests. But things, they weren't always that way, oh no, was a time when nobody might could hardly make out nothin' through all the trees. Thank goodness for Paul! He hauled in timber by-and-by the millions and, in return, he make way for the patchwork of farms, prairies, rivers and mountains you can stop on by and see today.
Well, it's like I told ya, ain't nobody say it didn't happen. However, not so much on the what but the where. Old Mr. Rockwell, he disagrees on where Paul was about that winter. He says:
“It was the winter of the "blue snow" when Paul was first heard of. In that winter, the tale goes, there was a forty-foot fall of blue snow in Northern Minnesota. That winter they had to cut the trees from forty feet above the ground, and in the spring there was a forest of stumps forty feet high. But the pine was so big at that time that it didn't make much difference in the size of the logs.”
— J. E. Rockwell. “Some Lumberjack Myths.”
Now, all that considered, it don't beat what comes next. Not by a long shot. For it was that very winter, when Paul, he come and spied himself a particular critter. An animal whose legend would come to be so connected with Paul, he never be the same without him.
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TALES
A severe cold wave, dripping down from the Arctic, had dropped the temperature to 30 degrees below zero.
‘Bathin’ weather’ the old-timer sneered.
He cocked his feet on the stove rail and inquired:
‘Ever hear about Paul Bunyan and the Year-of-the-Two-Winters?’
And then, over the crackle of the fire, he told of a winter so cold that the snow turned blue.
The tale is only one of many that composed the legend of the mythical Paul Bunyan.
According to old timers:
Bunyan built Lake Huron as a corral for milk whales when he learned whales were mammals.
He started the Mississippi river by emptying a pan of dishwater.
He built a fire under a lake in which he had dumped a carload of peas and a heard of oxen, and made pea soup for his logging crew. (He brought a paddle-wheel steamer from New Orleans to cruise around the lake and stir the soup.)
He brought the Swedes to Minnesota after selling the state to the king of Sweden.
And went through the longest, coldest winter ever heard of.
It was so cold the snow turned blue, and it grew progressively colder until next fall, when winter set in again.
Loggers in Paul Bunyan's day grew beards to protect their faces, and the beards grew to tremendous lengths.
‘Some of the boys had the ends of ’em knitted into socks,‘ the old-timer said.
A low-lying cloud bank was swiftly converted into a mountain of solid ice. That was the first of the glaciers.
The mercury in Bunyan's thermometer dropped so low it was three years climbing back to zero. Snow fell so heavily that Paul had to dig down to find the forests, and loggers were lowered on ropes to fell the trees.
‘It was so cold,’ the old-timer said, ‘the wind froze up in sheets.’
Bunyan then had it sawed and stored in chunks for the summer.”
—Anonymous, “Paul Bunyan Enthusiast Tells of ’Double Winter,” The Marion Progress, January 30, 1941, vol. XLV, no. 27, Marion, North Carolina
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[ DISCLOSURE: THE FOLLOWING IS REAL!—believe me—READER INDISCRETION IS ADVISED! ]
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