I can't help but look at these creatures and imagine a time long ago, where large mammals roamed the vast plains and wildernesses, tromping about, bulky, stupid, watchful of large predators with saber-toothed incisors. They are ugly, misshapen, horny, dirty, creatures from a primordial lagoon, all set in the Land of Fire and Spit.
Charging from out of nowhere, I was fearful of the beasts for the second time in my life. Once I was surrounded on a hillside, perched for a sunset spot, waiting among a herd of Bison in Lamar Valley. They moved around me on an outcropping of rock, where I sat with a false sense of security.
This time groups from the herd broke off and began charging full gallop down the hill toward us, as we photographed swimmers from the shore. We ran, scattered, reached a safe distance, and resumed photographing. In these moments, passion, excitement and the rush overwhelm your technical abilities, and you are there to see and to record, all in one. If the actual image did not work, the experience will always be there for me.
Yellowstone is a place out of the age of fire, the long lost era of eons ago, of my childhood fantasy. If given the "Happy Life Home", I would imagine a veldt much like this place. Where the last wild wolves hunt together, where grizzly mothers raise cubs. Yellowstone is a trip back in time, from another era, established as a place that will hopefully never get more developed than it already is.
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