FIRE!?......no....something ELSE
By Benny Bishop
29 March 2007
The Following Takes Place in Manahawkin, New Jersey, between the hours of 8:00 & 9:00am...................
Ok, i've got my coffee, my cigarette and my camera bag, i'm off to work. I walk to work through a trail in a small patch of woods. It's beautiful this morning and the sun is shining, it's warm, it's wednesday march 28th. I try to take my time but i'm usually late so i get there before i'm done my stogie, i turn around and face the patch of woods and the sun to relax with the last of my cigarette and coffee. The air seems still and suddenly a cloud of smoke rises from within the trees, i stare with confusion, then panic, oh no, theres a fire in the trees! My house is'nt far and what if this spreads, this place is too beautiful to burn. I look down the path and tons of this smoke is around, i look at a tree to the left and smoke pours through the branches. I run all over looking for the flames, my heart beating fast i search everywhere & find nothing. I remember hearing fire sirens and i wonder if the smoke is from somewhere else, then i see a small cloud arise from only a few feet away, WHAT IS HAPPENING!? I go back to the back door of my job, walking inside i see my coworker kathryn and ask her to come check this out, "Theres smoke out back and there might be a fire, come check this out with me" i say. Without much thought she follows me outside, i point to the trees and like i remember it, another puff of smoke rises from the trees, i half considered kids smoking a bong, but those were big hits if they were, too big. Kathryn tells me it looks like dust and we approach the area, she shakes the cedar and sure enough it's coming from the tree itself, it seems it was never smoke, it's Pollen, but alot of it. My grandfather Larry Eismann comes outside to see what we are looking at, he's amazed that he's never seen anything like this before. I later find that knowone seems to have ever seen the trees give off such massive amounts of pollen, plus there were alot of calls to the fire departments about possible forest fires because of the illusion of smoke from this strange phenomenon. My grandfather suggest i grab some pictures of all of this, so i grab my camera(this is the reason i bring my camera to work)and we go off to shake some trees. We found a tree with alot of these orange spores on it and Larry reaches into the tree and with my eye and lens focused, he gives that tree one hell of a shake, the Explosion of pollen(smoke) that comes loose in that tree is amazing!!! It's surrounded in this mysterious fog, soon covering over Larry and covering anything around it. Thank god none of us are highly alergic or this would seem like certain death, or swelling. I did get a strange rash on my arm that soon went away but i've never seen anything like this before and i wonder how many others thought there was fire and soon discovered a tree full of Pollen, and i mean FULL, check out the photos for an idea of how much really came from these trees. My grandfather Larry is the man in Tan and he is 6ft 3, Kathryn is the one who actually shook a spore coated tree for me only to go running when the cloud almost swallowed her whole!!!!! Enjoy nature and never let your sense of wonder slip away, we did'nt, but with something like this, how could you!?
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