The Ice Bison.

Last March in Yellowstone National Park, I had an extraordinary moment with one of the most resilient animals in the world: the bison. This particular bison was a giant mop-top. Indeed a relic of the Yellowstone plateau, covered in ice yet still showing its ribs as it battled a long winter.

The day appeared normal at first. The afternoon temp was five degrees, with light flurries. In a second, a storm blew over the mountains with sixty mph winds and blizzard-like conditions.  As I hiked back to my vehicle in the tempest, I came across this bison. The wind battered my tripod and I could barely keep from falling over as the front of my lens turned to ice. 

What did the bison do?

It *turned into the storm*.

It didn’t care about the storm. At all. And in a moment in the video you can even see ice crumbling and flying off the bison’s mouth.

This scene is a moment between one of nature’s toughest animals and a mere observer who wouldn’t even last an hour in conditions that the bison shrugs off.

As I filmed in the wind and snow, the bison turned his massive head and looked me right in the eyes. As if to say, “What are you doing out here, mere mortal? This my land. I am built for this storm. You are not”.

The wind seemed to agree as it howled.

And as the bison looked at me, I thought about how wild the place was, and how not-wild we humans are making the world outside of places like Yellowstone. That this giant bison was a reminder of where we truly come from…the core of nature. Being caught in the blizzard with the bison was not an outlier, was not a dream. It was not a vacation. It was reality. The things we humans have built, the constructs and machinations and the sprawl…those are not where we come from. Those are the outliers in the context of time.

I struggled with numbness in my face and hands as the bison lumbered off in the blizzard, down into a geothermal creek where it warmed up. As I trudged back to my vehicle and waited inside, unable to feel my face or hands, the vehicle rocked in the wind. And I realized that as soon as I closed my door, that world was gone.

The real world.

Two months later, I was back in Yellowstone during spring. The meadows were lush green and carved by winding creeks. I came across the spot where the bison and I endured the blizzard. I hiked along the geothermal creek, looking for signs that the bison left the storm as I once did.

I did not see the bison there. But a mile up along the trail, I caught movement down in a meadow. There, a giant, mop-topped bison grazed. The bison had put on some weight, but I could still see its ribs.

The bison made it out of the storm, too.

It was doing okay.

I decided not to approach the bison. There was no need to film it, no need to bother it. It was still recovering from a long, long winter. And as I crested a ridge and looked behind me, the bison was gone.

And so was I.

Sometimes, I still think of that moment with the ice bison. Of how bad the storm was. Of maybe how both of us shouldn’t have made it out of that last winter storm. And I smile. Not because we did survive, but because we were alive,  and had the option to survive.

editors note: “The Ice Bison” is a short film available only on my Facebook page.