Tag Archives: white buffalo

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

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One of these things is not like the other. Can you guess which one it is? If you guessed the dark buffalo in front you’d be wrong! It’s the lighter one behind it that’s different. It’s lighter you see, in fact it is so light it is known as a white buffalo. A white buffalo is a miraculous thing and it is sacred to Native Americans as it is related to a prophesy called White Buffalo Calf Woman, which you can read more about here. http://discoverjamestownnd.com/data/upfiles/media/WhiteBuffaloLegend_large.jpg The chances of a white buffalo calf being born are thought to be one in ten million.

The National Buffalo Museum is located just outside Jamestown North Dakota and it is famous for having a white buffalo. Although the buffalo seen here is not pure white, but an orange-ish pale color there are patches of white on its hide.  Its mother is actually an albino, but has given birth to several pure white calves. The other thing about White buffalo is that they don’t always stay white. As they grow and age their color can change to a darker shade similar to the buffalo shown here to nearly dark brown again. Another snow-white buffalo calf born pure white, had its head color change from white to a dark brown and the rest of its body became a silvery tan as it aged. The prophesy states that the buffalo can become four colors, black, brown, red and white.

Visitor’s from all over the world have travelled to the museum to see this living miracle and of course Native Americans have travelled in huge numbers to pay their respects. If you’re travelling on I-94 through North Dakota watch for Jamestown and spend some time with one of the rarities of the animal world.

Light In The Meadow

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After a mind-clearing journey of over 4000 miles through the Pacific Northwest and Canada I’m back in the Director’s chair here at the Institute. One of the largest conclusions I have come to is that there is an incredible amount of green out there in the Pacific Northwest. Everything is green, from the mighty trees that grow right down to the ocean’s edge to the green eggs and ham I got at a local eatery, it’s green. Many, many shades of green, almost too many if one were forced to make a judgment about it. I like green. Don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my favorite colors, but I had never been inside a green explosion before and it took some getting used to.

The trip was fantastic. The Bokeh Maru seemed to respond to the lighter touch of just one person at the helm instead of the four-hour watch routine we had on our Montana adventure where almost all of the crew took their turns at the wheel. Consequently she performed flawlessly. No hesitation, no refusal to go a where ever I directed her and she seemed to enjoy the new scenery as much as I did. I even began to suspect she may have been there before but being a gentleman I didn’t ask. A lady must have her  secrets.

There were new things to see nearly every minute of the day and it was pure bliss to camp next to the ocean with only a small sand dune separating us from the ability to turn left and head for Japan. The waves were relentless and the sound of the rain on the roof during the night was mesmerizing. As a treat I let the Bokeh Maru wet her wheels in the incoming tide and you could hear her squealing in delight as the salt water washed the remnants of the long road trip from her undercarriage. After we left I watched her closely so that she didn’t surreptitiously try and turn back to the sea.

We traveled through the Columbia gorge, then along the seacoast of Oregon and Washington using the famous highway 101 until we could go no further then loaded on to a car ferry aptly named the USS Scratch and Dump to go to Vancouver Island in Canada. Upon entry I had a chance to visit with the charming and polite customs official who was most interested in whether I had a gun aboard, or owned a gun which might not be aboard, and whether I kept guns in my home here in the USA. An interesting question asked was whether I supported the right to own guns. I answered all the questions as truthfully as I could with, No, No, No, and Hell yes. I t was enough to get me into the sovereign country of Canada but not without some suspicious looks as I slowly eased onto Canadian soil. I was asked about the gun thing by Canadians at several of the campgrounds I stayed in while in Canada. It something that our Canadian friends seemed to be very interested in.

I took a whale watching boat out to see if we could locate Orcas or Killer whales as the more bloodthirsty among us like to call them and we did, plus Humpback whales and a rare white-sided dolphin that had the boat crew all excited. Apparently seeing one of them was akin to seeing a white buffalo here.

I also took the opportunity of making a surprise visit to the new managers of the eastern Oregon satellite office of the Institute. Things are progressing somewhat slowly there as far as the remodeling and refurbishment of the old site goes, but I was assured that as soon as Spring hit they would begin the transformation in earnest. Meanwhile I was fed and watered as one of the family and soon forgot why I had even stopped there in the first place. I even had to stay a second day after the promise of a meal of free-range, fresh cooked fish, Steelhead or it might have been Halibut, that had been swimming freely in the river moments before. I even tried the old trick of feinting extreme malnutrition by sucking my cheeks in and holding a pillow in front of my less than svelte stomach, hoping to get more food the next day but although my new management team lives in a backwater of the Wallowa valley they are smart enough to quickly catch on to my ruse and went out for cigarettes and didn’t return until they saw the end of the Bokeh Maru turn on to the highway. Disappointed but impressed with their ability to spot a flim-flam man I headed back towards Colorado.

We, The Bokeh Maru and I, had been out for nearly three weeks and it was time to get back to work. Before that work could commence however I had to change the color palette in my head from the greens and greys of the Northwest and replace it with the local one so that I was reoriented again. That a meant a quick trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park to firmly plant the yellows and reds and gold that was the aspens and meadows of Fall back in the front of my mind.

The image above is the late afternoon sun streaming through the aspen grove at the edge of Moraine meadow. It was enough to get my mind right again. As time goes by I will be posting images from the trip to the Northwest with the usual accompanying stories that a few of you find interesting. The rest of you that simply look at the pictures then go do something interesting will also not be forgotten as I try and post something to stimulate your attention span. It’s good to be back.

A quick note. As this is a busy time of year for me with the fall color change and the rut happening I will be not be posting every day until I’m home and winter has me locked in. So although I will try my best to get posts out there I will be gone several more times as I try and get the photography done while the opportunity presents itself. Thanks to all of you who patiently put up with my inconsistencies. I will make sure all of  you get entered in my will.

You Shall Not Pass !

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YouShallNotPass2554Buffalo Bull Yellowstone

Early this Spring we are began getting reports of a white buffalo up in Middle-Earth or as it is sometimes known, Yellowstone National Park. The reports were sketchy, sometimes it would be seen ghosting along the banks of the Yellowstone, or high up on a forgotten ridge in the Lamar, or sometimes for unknown reasons riding in the back of an old Dodge half-ton, but the reports were consistent. There seemed to be a white buffalo there and we needed to document its existence. After all, that is the mandate of The Institution. To go where no man has gone before and make up stories about it.

The Institute immediately sent its crack photographic team to locate, photograph and get its hoof print on a contract. If you’re going to track down a ghost and document it for the world to see, you have to monetize the experience and be able to cash in to make the endeavor worthwhile, otherwise it’s just a good deed and there are enough of those going on at the moment. We need some of those big fat green smackaroonies to keep the lights on.

Our team of seventy-three highly trained staff members arrived and quickly fanned out to begin collecting  data on this white buffalo. The reports began trickling in, he was up on the south side of Mt. Washburn licking the side of a pine tree, he was down near Fishing bridge cavorting with the Cutthroats, he had just been seen getting the oil changed in the dodge. When people began hearing about our project the reports went from a trickle to a furious outpouring of information. It was if the public took a strange delight in bringing us these reports, each more fantastic than the last. We began to be suspicious and concerned that some of these sightings were unreliable.

One report that seemed to have some reliability to it was the sighting in the Hayden Valley near the Mt. Mary trailhead. It was one that would not die. Each report was very similar to the others and we began to think we might have hit on something. If you stood on the edge of the road and glassed the tree line there would often be a glint of white back in the trees. Sometimes in the morning when the fog was thick from the Yellowstone river and you could barely make out the dark outlines of the big pines, a ghostly bellow could be heard throughout the valley, echoing back and forth until it faded away in the early morning stillness.

We immediately established base camp at the pullout near the trailhead and set up the tent and satellite transponders to send the data out as soon as we received it. It was here that we also set up the field kitchen, the explorer’s club, the theater, the T-shirt stand, the cut-out of what we thought the Great White, as we had begun calling him, would look like so you could get your photo taken with it as a pricey but tacky souvenir. Security was tight and bracelets were issued to all of the paying customers. This was to keep those pesky park rangers out who were trying to establish authority over what is our property as tax-paying citizens, with the flimsy excuse that commercial activity is banned from our National parks. What a bunch of yahoo’s, like we’d believe that making a buck was illegal. Anyway since it is legal to carry weapons in our national parks our staff was able to reason with them without having to resort to using the AR-15’s we had brought along for self-protection.

Everything was going gangbusters and the support from the public was pouring in, T-shirt sales had jumped 86% in the last 48 hours especially the one with the “I Saw the Great White Buffalo and It Was Bitchin” slogan on it. We immediately tripled the order from our Chinese outlet in Singapore and told them to air freight them here. So with the bailing machine working overtime to handle all those great big fat green smackaroonies, there was talk of franchising this operation to other national parks just as soon as we could fabricate reasons for it.

Then the big one hit. The great White had just been seen on the edge of the meadow and was simply standing there as if it were daring us to come and photograph it. You don’t dare The Institute. We don’t back down from a challenge, or run from adversity. Instead we stand and fight, we endeavor to persevere, and we do the hard thing. The call went out for our more trustworthy interns to take over our sales centers and we grabbed our cameras and headed for the meadow. Calls were going out left and right as we mounted what was nearly a paramilitary operation. “Don’t forget your extra flash cards, make sure you got charged batteries, no tripods those just make buffalo mad.”  Photo equipment was banging  and clanging together matching the sound of slightly overweight photographers grunting and wheezing as they ran to be in the first wave of white buffalo shooters. The excitement was heady and the thrill was on. We charged en-masse into the meadow and that ‘s where we met disaster.

Disaster in the form of Randalf. Randalf the Brown. The horned one. He stood there calmly, waiting for us to come to a stumbling halt, before he uttered those fateful words. “You Shall Not Pass!” There was instant silence as we stopped and stared at each other. The silence grew, the tension mounted, and then the inevitable happened. Someone snickered. Oh man, that was something I think everyone would take back if they could. It was the new guy, a stringer we had hired at the last-minute from the Boise Sun-Times thinking a local would be helpful. He wasn’t.

Without moving a muscle Randalf looked at him, blinked once slowly and there was a dizzying flash of light, a soundless scream and where the luckless Boise guy had stood there was simply a pile of, well, in the old days they were known simply as buffalo chips or sometimes buffalo pies. The fact that the guys camera, an old Nikon D300 with a broken strap was sticking out the pile was the only indication that one of our own was gone. There was no more snickering, in fact you couldn’t find the trace of a smile anywhere. In fact you couldn’t find a trace of anyone anywhere, there was just this giant vacuum as those that were closest to old Boise teleported back to base camp. Some didn’t even stop there, they went straight on to Cody.

That left the leader of the expedition, a fearless soul who didn’t flinch, falter or flee in the face of adversity, to face Randalf alone. There was another long moment  and then another. “Any chance of getting a shot of the white buffalo?” “No” was the simple answer. “Any chance of me getting out this without being turned in to a meadow-muffin?” “Only if you leave this place and never return, now” was the reply. “What if I just step over here to the side and grab a quick shot before I go…” “You Shall Not pass !”

Unfortunately the expedition ended at this point. When our rescue team arrived on site there was no trace of our two original team members and they are presumed lost. We did recover two cameras and the Boise guys wristwatch but that was it. The Park rangers sensing a moment of weakness soon overcame our security and confiscated all of our property which they still maintained was illegal. We never got an accurate count of the money that was seized, they broke our bailing machine and everyone who had bought a T-shirt soon abandoned them in case they ran into Randalf.

All in all this was a complete disaster. We’re in the hole for a bundle, the Chinese want their money for the T-shirts and customs won’t release them because of a conflict with some obscure government regulation. This is a black-eye for The Institute and I have to say I’m worried about our solvency. And worst of all we don’t have a single image of the Great White buffalo. Not one. But I did hear that there is one in a park* just off I-94 near Jamestown, North Dakota. If that’s so then maybe there is a chance of salvaging something out of this. We’ll keep you posted.

* http://www.buffalomuseum.com/