Liam's Bison

We knew there were bison running wild at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We'd seen their tracks and droppings all around the main visitor center. But so far, all we'd seen were some distant black specks, which we needed optics to make out.
I love a kid with binoculars.


Liam was stoked! Even distant dotty bison are better than none.


Our sweet Shoomie was about to get the surprise of his little life when we rounded a bend in the road at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. One minute, nothing, then BOOM! OMG!
A massive, and I mean HUUUUGE, bull bison was rubbing his woolly neck on a guardrail only a couple of feet from the car. We all inadvertantly recoiled inside the car, and Bill paused only long enough for me to roll down the window and fire off a couple of shots with the 18-35mm lens. The real short lens. I mean, you don't want to tick off an animal weighing over a ton and armed with wicked hooks and hooves, not to mention a head like a battering ram. Liam was hyperventilating. We all were.

We pulled a respectful distance away, only to see a truck roll right up, and its occupants disembark, perhaps intending to compete for the 2009 Darwin Awards.

Only two things are infinite -- the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not so sure about the Universe. --Albert Einstein

Go, Daddy, go. Get that picture.

Soon, the bison ambled off, evidently choosing not to reduce Richard Avedon to a spot of grease on the road.
photo by Bill Thompson III


Reverently, we examined the guardrail, shiny from years of such itchrubbing.

Liam put his hand in the bull's immense round hoofprints

which trailed off through the bentonite gumbo.

He was a gift, that's all, a gift to our boy and to us.


These wild things enrich our lives just by their existence. But experiencing the sight, smell, sound and feel of them can change a life, and help a child know how to be grateful.

Here's to wild places and hearts that know them.

Here end the Montana and North Dakota posts.
Canoe down Montana's Missouri River,
go see bison and wild horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, or
come see the prairie potholes at Carrington, ND's Potholes and Prairies Festival in early June 2010.

Or do it all in one unutterably swell foop. We did!

Go. Just go. Show your kids a real live grunty bison.