American Buffalo

(Page 2 of 2)

Alone on his hunt, in a land of icy rivers, sudden snowfalls, and thick forests of alder and spruce, Rinella doggedly pursues any sign of buffalo, aware that although he's engaging in an activity that has gone on for many thousands of years, the modern hunt, enhanced by tools such as rifles and scopes, is not quite the same. At last, after several days toughing it out in the wilderness, he comes upon a small herd of 20, making their way downriver, grazing on prairie sagewort. His shot is true; he has his buffalo.

As he stands over its stiffening carcass, he finds himself awash in ambiguity. "I'd like to make a balloon with the bladder and let it float in the river," he writes. "I'm also curious what it would look like if I painted my face with buffalo fat that's been dyed black with the ash from buffalo chips. In a way, though, doing those things seems like a form of cultural hijacking. I could learn what it feels like to have my face smeared with buffalo fat, but that wouldn't tell me what it's like to believe that I was harnessing the power of the buffalo. And without feeling both of those things, I imagine that it's difficult to properly feel either one of them."

This sort of reckoning with the moral complexities of his hunt elevates Rinella's narrative above the bait-and-bullet, kill-and-tell school of outdoor writing. Rinella has studied his subject so intently that he can name every part of the animal and knows precisely how it was used by native people. He has deftly woven the history and cultural significance of the buffalo into a tale of adventure that is both lively and crisp, and yet in the end, despite his best efforts, he finds himself cut off from the sort of intimacy with the buffalo that can come only from relying on it for an entire way of life.