Where the Buffalo Roam

During my first week at Roosevelt Lodge, I felt like Harry Potter when he found a troll in the bathroom.  My cabin is roughly 200 meters from the communal bathroom, a sink with only cold water and four stalls which are often clogged. To get there, I must take a dusty trail embedded with rocks that never fail to trip me.  As I walk, there are cabins on my left, and on my right there are parked cars that belong to employees, a basketball court with a hoop that is too high, and a field of tall grasses.  I've seen deer lounge silently in the grasses before scurrying away into the forest.  An occasional bison will sneak onto the premises.  I don't know why they come to Roosevelt because there's hardly any grass compared to the valley across the street where they usually live.  But they still visit, and sometimes they stay a while. 

Before I accepted this job, I was warned about the dangers of wild animals.  At each trailhead, Park Rangers post scary pictures of grizzlies bearing their teeth.  The Rangers advise hikers to carry bear spray, which is very similar to mace and is largely used as a mental pacifier and an insurance policy, one of those I'd-rather-have-it-and-not-use-it possessions. To be fair, grizzlies are not to be treated like puppies, but they are not lethal monsters.  They mostly avoid humans, and they are difficult to find unless you go looking for one.  But the bison are everywhere, and they kill more people than any other animal in Yellowstone.

Bison are the largest land animals in North America.  They look like giant versions of ugly steer wearing tattered jackets of fur over their shoulders.  Aside from the bald eagle, the buffalo is the quintessential American animal.  They once dominated the plains of the West until early white settlers nearly wiped them out.  The bison are protected in Yellowstone where there are no fences, and they can roam wherever they please.  This type of freedom in the country's third most visited national park means that bison will walk leisurely across the road and cause traffic to pile up, a phenomenon known locally as a bison jam.  For the reckless kind, the bison's freedom increases the likelihood for casualties because some people treat Yellowstone like an interactive petting zoo. 

I've seen a video clip of an ignorant tourist trying to impress his friends by getting too close to a bison.  He followed it around a tree and surprised the animal.  When you invade a bison's space, it will let you know.  It will stand its ground and snort at you.  The bison in the video burrowed its horns under the man and catapulted him into the air.  The man did an inadvertent backflip and landed hard on his spine.  The animals may look like stupid, sloth-like brutes, but they are not to be underestimated.  They can get aggressive if angered, and they can run up to forty miles per hour.

As I walked to the bathroom during one of my first mornings at Roosevelt, there was a bison in my path.  I thought of that video of the catapulted man and the mortality statistics, so I gave the bison a wide berth and let him continue eating his patch of grass.  I was annoyed that I didn't have a bathroom in my cabin.  I was accustomed to the privacy and the ease of walking five feet from my bedroom to take a shower.  Now I have to carry my soap and my Loofa to the shower facilities a three minute walk from my cabin. 

When I first arrived, I assumed there would be a time when I would have to wait in line to take a shower.  There are four individual showers with doors and curtains that close.  Roughly fifty men live and work at Roosevelt.  Despite those odds, I have always found an open shower when I needed it, except when the porter was taking his time cleaning the facilities at an inconvenient hour. I also anticipated forcing myself to take a cold shower after the hot water was gone, but this too has never happened.

This is a relief because the nights get chilly.  When I walk to the shower after sunset, I wear a jacket, shorts, and flip-flops.  The beam from my headlamp prevents me from tripping on rocks and stepping in bison dung.  This trek used to be a pain, but the extra effort makes me appreciate the showers for their refreshing warmth.  When I'm at home, showering is just another item on my daily checklist, another reminder that the human body requires time-consuming maintenance.  But in landlocked Wyoming, there is little do but read and explore the wilderness. The feebler ones spend their leisure time drinking to excess in small town saloons.  Life here is slow and rustic at the Roosevelt Lodge, where small pleasures fill my days.   

In the beginning, Erin and I wrote a list of things we should buy to make our summer more comfortable.  I wanted to buy an extension cord and a reading lamp to clip onto my bedpost. Erin wanted to buy a device that would boost her cell phone service. We don't have any reception where we live. Other locations in Yellowstone such as Old Faithful or Mammoth Hot Springs have cell service and Wi-Fi in the hotels. In our employee dining room, we have a computer with Internet that is often slower than dial-up from the early 2000s. Whoever is in charge of the Roosevelt Lodge doesn't want the visitors and workers to have these modern intrusions.  People come to these cabins to disconnect from their habits and to experience Yellowstone without diluting it with distracting technology.

To make phone calls, Erin and I walk about a mile away and up a hill to climb atop a rock that looks like a buffalo.  For some reason, Verizon phones get four bars and LTE network from this isolated perch, where we can see a herd of bison graze below us. To post my blog, I type everything into an app on my iPhone, then walk to the rock where I use my Verizon network to share the blog via Facebook.  Calls also go through, but often there's static, so I have to repeat each sentence four times.  We live in the valley, so the wind tunnels in between the mountains and gets so loud that the person on the other line can hear it. 

When I'm in my cabin, I keep my phone on airplane mode to conserve the battery, and I rarely bring my phone with me unless I use it to take pictures. I no longer feel that phantom vibrate against my thigh when I'm expecting a text.  I get a flood of messages once I gain elevation and receive a clear signal.  I plan times to make phone calls and text friends and message people on Facebook.  My phone doesn't buzz while I'm reading on the front porch.  There is no temptation to text at work because that is not an option. 

Although I lived briefly in a world largely empty of cell phones, I remember a time when it was considered rude to call during dinner or after a certain hour.  Now there is no etiquette, and people expect responses at any time of the day. I prefer the idea of communicating when I want to rather than having outsiders visit me any time they please. I focus on the conversation rather than multitasking.  I have several things to say because my life is different from the one I had at home, and I ask questions because there is progress being made where I cannot witness it.  When I make phone calls or answer text messages that is the only thing I do because I've traveled out of my way to do so.

One evening, Erin and I set out for he Buffalo Rock so that she could call her family.  The sun was starting to sink below the western ridgeline, and the sky beamed a vibrant pink. 

I ran up the sloped side of the rock, and Erin climbed up after me.  We took our seats on the divots away from the elk bones and skull that were arrayed decoratively at the rock's crest.  The animal was killed in the valley, perhaps by a cougar or by the heat.  The body was consumed by opportunistic carnivores and insects, and the meatless bones dried under the desiccating sun until some fool thought it would be funny to move the skeleton onto the rock where someone would be sure to see it.

I read a book about Wyoming characters under the fading sunlight as Erin talked to her parents.  When she finished her call, I donned my backpack and slid on my butt down the rock.  Erin's brother called her when we were walking down the slope filled with bison patties and sagebrush that scratched our ankles.  The daylight turned murky and gray as night took over, and I turned on my headlamp.

Just before we reached the flatlands, I spotted a bison ambling up a horse trail about twenty yards from us.  The bison stared at me and snorted.  I told Erin not to come any farther.  The bison's dark hide blended into the surrounding blackness, and I could only see the flash of its pupils reflecting the light from my headlamp. The bison was clearly annoyed by our presence.  It stood as still as the giant stuffed animals found in every other gift shop in Wyoming.  

I spotted another large rock nearby and walked toward it without taking my eyes off the bison.  In the unlikely event that the animal charged, we could scurry up the rock and be safe from the horned beast.  The animal snorted with impatience until we reached the rock out of his sight.  It carried on its way into the valley toward the rest of its kind.  Erin and I did the same but moved in the opposite direction.

It doesn't make sense to have service where the bison live and to not have service where the humans live, but that is how this world works. We could buy a cell service booster, an expensive gadget that can give you two bars where you normally have one. Erin and I thought this was necessary but that's only because we believed having reliable service was necessary, but it is not.  You can live without it.

Instead of buying things to fulfill our needs, we changed our needs.  I don't need a reading lamp and an extension cord.  I just move to a place where I can read by the sunlight.  We realized we don't need a service booster to receive signal from our cabin.  Instead, we walk to a place where there is service, even if that means a possible encounter with wildlife.  When we return to the dead spot where we live, we adapt to a life away from the world.