WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM

On one day every September, more than 14,000 people in South Dakota “time-travel to the Old West,” said Connie Nelson in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. For 46 years, Custer State Park’s annual Buffalo Roundup has helped thin the park’s bison population, because the local grasslands can’t support more than 1,000 head. (click below to read more)



 Last fall, my husband and I were there to catch the spectacle. Rising before dawn in our camper, we arrived at a viewing site while it was still dark and mingled with the crowd until the crack of a whip drew everyone’s attention to the hills. “Dark, bulky shapes appeared on the top of the ridge”—slowly at first, until the numbers grew and they “floated down the hills like the shadows from a cloud.” Riders drove them down as the enthralled crowd watched—at one point, the buffalo “were close enough that I could see their heaving sides.” For a few moments, we stood amid “deafening, thrilling chaos.”