Bison Roadblock!

A long time ago, I told you about this summer's trip to North Dakota. Now I'm circling back, even though August is throwing every diamond she has at me and it's all I can do to keep up the ooh's and aaahs, much less blog about it. The bloggy backlog, she is tremendous. Hundreds of photos lie keening in their folders, waiting to be shared.



The last couple of years, we haven't stopped in North Dakota--we've pushed farther west into Montana. Medora, North Dakota, has an irresistible pull on us. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is an incredible place, a place of painted, sculptured bentonite clay--badlands, really--and abundant wildlife. It's one of the best places we know to surround yourself with bison.

Bison are big animals. Every once in awhile you stumble on a bull who is just...huge.



The really old boys have these huge Afros of black wool that flop out sideways, giving their heads a deltoid appearance, and massive pantaloons of wool that wobble as they walk.



Their horns hook back toward their skulls. It makes me wonder if they'd grow right into the skull if the bull lived long enough. He was a tank of an animal, clearly quite aged. And probably cranky enough to want to be alone most of the time.



A more modestly proportioned cow and her orange calf. The backdrop in this photo kills me.

In the days before a concerted government campaign to exterminate them, bison once covered the Great Plains, looking like a nubbly brown blanket when they were on the move. To break the resistance of Plains-dwelling Native Americans by pulling their food source out from under them, the U.S. Army and private contractors shot nearly all our bison in less than two decades. By 1890, they were all but gone. Before this summer, I’d seen bison only in small groups on private reserves. Our family trip changed all that.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park on the western border of North Dakota has a herd of around 300 bison, with a penchant for hanging out on the park’s only roadway.

Being brought to a halt by a shaggy, blackbrown wall of bovine flesh is a thrilling thing. The animals show no concern whatsoever for the cars that quickly stack up behind their roadblock.

They separate and flow around the vehicles, a grunting, breathing, massy river. Golf-ball sized eyes roll, meeting yours as the animals trudge slowly past, an arm’s length or closer away. Knowing that this is one of North America’s most dangerous and unpredictable animals adds to the allure of the experience, at least for me. I've been told that the experience is even more heart-pounding when viewed from the back of a motorcycle. I cannot imagine being on a motorcycle in a herd of bison. Well, to start with I can't imagine riding at high speeds with my limbs and head exposed to the pavement, but riding through a herd of bison? Noooo thanks. You'd think they'd warn you at the park entrance. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here (on motorcycles)."

Ten-year-old Liam, who has been enthralled with bison since he was very young, was a quivering, pleading mess in our first bison roadblock. His apprehension only increased as time went on. “Please, Daddy. Just drive. Just go. Get away from them. Please. I beg you.” But the bison in Medora kept us stalled until well after dark, standing shoulder to shoulder, their backs turned to us, tufted tails switching insolently across their narrow haunches as we listened helplessly to our son’s pleas to get moving. The only thing to do was to relax into it, to inhale the rich, manurey smell of them, to listen to their sonorous grunts, to luxuriate in the texture of dark wool forequarters, shining black horn hooks, and smooth flanks.

I pee, unconcerned.

The bison issue only intensified when we drove on to Yellowstone National Park. Here, as many as 4,500 bison live, and bison roadblocks were apt to be correspondingly longer. Yellowstone is the only place in America where bison have lived continuously since prehistory. And these animals—the only genetically pure Plains bison left-- seem to know it. They're eerily skilled at moseying out into the road just as you think you're going to squeak by them.

In our week's stay among bison, a funny thing happened. I came to revel in the roadblocks, to look forward to them, and to crow with delight when we encountered them. To me, they were an invitation to join the herd, to watch the evening light drain out against the stark blueblack outlines of the hills and mountains, to slow it all down to bison time, even as our hearts raced at the proximity of these massive beasts. There are few places in the world where animals get to call all the shots. Those are the places I most want to be.

Still I pee. You are as nothing to me.

We Eliminated Them

One of the hard things about having your tender and sensitive nine-year-old son be in love with bison is the sad, sad history of the animal on our Great Plains. We entered the Charles M. Russell Museum's brand new bison exhibit in Great Falls, Montana with a little trepidation, knowing the story in advance. A thrilling surround film with thundery, grunty sound effects put us right in the middle of a stampeding herd. And then there came the bones.

To kill off the American Indian, first you must kill off his primary food source: the bison. And so, in the chillingly methodical way of our kind, we did that with speed and efficiency. Hired hunters killed all day long, taking nothing but the tongue, or taking nothing at all. This, when Plains Indians ate each bison they killed clean, used every single hair and sinew from a carcass for something. I cannot imagine the disgust with which they must have viewed this waste, this obscenity we visited upon the animal they valued above all else. And upon them. I cannot imagine why we thought they should welcome us on their hunting grounds, or do anything other than send arrows through us on sight. We'd hang a man for stealing horses. What should be the punishment for sending the American bison, their sacred staff of life, to extinction?

A photograph of a pile of bison skulls. Not bones, just skulls, stacked. We did this.

Liam and I stood before this display and wept.

We got rid of them, these animals that could teach any cow a thousand lessons about surviving a Montana winter, who could gain weight on forage that would starve cattle.

Charles M. Russell

From one of Charles Russell's letters. No one could convey the thunder and confusion of a herd like he could.

The bison is an icon of the vanished West, and our world is now so cut up and controlled, so plowed under and compartmentalized, that there are no places outside parks where bison can roam, where they wouldn't have to push down fences or cross highways to find the food they need.

Their hunch-backed, narrow silhouettes haunt me. Once, they ruled the Plains but are now reduced to remnant captive herds, or small wild herds confined to parks and reserves.

Still, we'd go looking for them, for Liam's sake and ours.

For more on bison and their superb adaptations, see my post, "The Durable Bison,"

a post I love.

It dates from the days when I had time to think and write more in this space. But that's OK, no regrets. Sometimes you blog, and sometimes you live your life. To every thing there is a season.