Anywhere But Here

Where the Buffalo Roam

During the summer between my first and second year of grad school, my friends Sara, Lydia and I decided to roadtrip around the American West, doing ten national parks and monuments in 10 days.

Yeah, I still can’t figure out why we thought this would be a good idea. The only explanation I can come up with is that grad school fried our brains. 

Our first day, we drove up through Nebraska to South Dakota, and saw the Black Hills and the Badlands. We set up camp that night in Custer State Park. 

Sara was mad about finding buffalo, or as she called them, “busaloads” (something about a childhood memory). Me, I didn’t really care one way or another. But she had to see the damn buffalo. We found forest ranger and asked him where the best place to go to see them would be. He gave us a map and told us not to expect much, because it was the wrong time of day and year to get a close view. 

Sara figures that if nothing else, we can stop the car and take pictures with a zoom. We pack up Sara’s Grand Am and start driving the extremely curvy route. My stomach was not pleased. 
We come around yet another turn and—-holy crap!

There were buffalo. Boy, were there buffalo. Both sides of the road were packed with peacefully grazing buffalo. We slowly inched forward in the car until we were surrounded.

Sara was ecstatic. I was terrified. 

Sure, the buffalo were leaving us alone for now. But I was completely aware of the fact that should they choose to, they could crush us and our tiny car like bugs. Lydia was equally freaked out. She refused to take any pictures, so Sara had to juggle driving and taking photographs. Sara was NOT going to miss getting pictures of the “busaloads.”

We crawled along until we came over a rise and saw a few buffalo hanging out ON the road. Nothing to do but wait. And wait. Because, where does a 1600-pound buffalo stand? Anywhere it wants to.

Finally they move, and so do we. I’d started to relax at this point. The buffalo were just hanging out, not bothering us, and it was pretty neat to watch them. I didn’t even mind the next couple of times we had to wait for the buffalo to move out of the road.

And then I make the fatal mistake of looking out the back window. Where a little buffalo calf was trotting up the road to come check out our car. 

All three of us were freaked out by that point. Because if the little one got too close, and Mom decided that we were a threat to her precious baby…yeah, none of us wanted to think about that. How do you make a car assume an unthreatening posture?

Baby keeps trotting toward us, and I didn’t dare even breathe. I tried to will the buffalo in front of us to move so that we could start driving again. The next few minutes felt longer than a 14-hour drive down to Mississippi (a frequent family trip when I was younger). Finally, the buffalo move, Sara starts driving and we all start taking in oxygen again. 

After a few more (fortunately less eventful) stops, we leave the buffalo behind and I start to come down off the adrenaline. But no, my ordeal wasn’t over yet. Over the next hill, there was a herd of wild donkeys hanging out by the road. 

Sara swore the guidebook said they were friendly or something like that, so she stops the car and rolls down the windows, and a couple of the donkeys stick their heads inside. I cautiously pet one, even though I’m really not ready to deal with this right after my buffalo trauma. Then the donkeys start trying to EAT MY HAIR. 

Um, no. I rolled up my window and curled up into the fetal position until we got onto roads with more traffic and fewer wild animals who wanted to kill me. 

I took perverse pleasure in ordering buffalo meat at most of the restaurants we ate at for the rest of the trip.

Caitlin Moriarity is a freelance editor and writer who has been hooked on travel since a semester studying abroad in college. You can read her other travel writing at www.tropeofirony.com.