Quiet Times

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Buffalo herd Lamar River Yellowstone

It is scenes like this that draw me back to Yellowstone year after year. A small group of buffalo are spending some quiet time browsing and resting by some snags next to the river. The trees, either damaged by the 1988 fires or simply died off as they do, make perfect scratching posts. Their long shaggy winter coats are mostly gone, but it feels good to scratch just for the sheer enjoyment of it. It won’t be long before the winds of winter blow these standing dead pines down and the herd will move along the river until they find a new bunch.

Buffalo like to stand in quiet water and you can see them in there for hours. They seem unfazed by the cold water, and it is cold after coming down out of the Absaroka mountains, fed by springs and melting snow. It’s a little later in the summer as you can see by the size and color of the calves in the herd, no new-born red ones in this bunch. The rut hasn’t started yet, everybody is eating their fill because they know that as pleasant as the weather is today, winter is waiting up in the snow-covered tops of the Absaroka mountains. Soon it will sweep down in all its fury and make life much less idyllic.

Right now though, everyone is taking a break and making use of an infrequent event, quiet time.