Bee & Bison Habitat Project, 2024

I’m out here on the plains in South Dakota.

Watching the bees, watching the bison, watching the flowers; watching the bison watch bees, watching the bees watch bison. Watching, hearing, feeling a whole landscape buzz, rattle, bellow, sing, croak, creek, chirp, click - breathe in, breathe out.

I feel good here.

I feel whole here.

The bison did this because this is where they belong, and the ecological landscape needs them.

They lick every plant before they bite, carefully leaving the flowers for the bees and the saplings for the beavers and the recovering woodlands.

They are incarnations of grace.

They ebb and flow through the flats and hills, nearly silently, like a soft brown wave. Their breath sounds like the wind. Their grunts and bellows thump the air and my heart.

They’re here, and then they’re gone. They move so fast, with such efficiency and delicacy, and also so much power. The herd envelops my field of solitude most mornings and I could cry from the overwhelming gratitude for the big, good company. And then they’re just gone. And I could cry from the depth of loneliness hanging in the air when they leave, when I am no longer in their herd. Or is it the sinking, knowing guilt and grief for what was done to them and their people.

A wave of gunpowder and carnage.

But here, today, they are alive and I get to stare into their eyes and talk to them and hear their breath while the sun rises another day and halo of bees circles us.