Where the buffalo roam?

Whoever would have thought that they roam near mile marker 130 on route 80 in Ohio?  This is, in fact, very near where the Belted Galloway cows and calves romp, although on the other side of many lanes of traffic.  I look forward to driving back along that stretch on Tuesday, to see what else there is to see.  

I've been driving from Ann Arbor, Michigan to points east (Philadelphia, New Jersey, Massachusetts) for too many years now, and always see new things.  In the past several months, though, I have a new car (thanks, Deb!) which sits about 18" higher off the ground than does my beloved 18-year old Miata; it's a whole new world up there in the relative stratosphere.  I can see over bridge abutments, beyond the scrub growing at the roadside and what I see is often boggling.  Who knew there were beaver dams and ponds several yards from the screaming traffic?Makes you wonder what you'd see from the cab of an 18-wheeler.

  

Who knew a small herd of American bison graze in a pasture abutting the west-bound lanes of Route 80?  It was still on the early, foggy side when I drove past so they loomed suddenly and hugely out of the mist.  How could they be so big, so far away?  How large they must be if you were to stand next to them!  And to think man almost wiped them off the face of the earth, a depradation of incredible hubris.  I think of that scene in the movie, "Dances with Wolves", the buffalo hunt; Kevin Costner's character shoots a buffalo mere feet before it barrels into and over a child.  I remember reading about that scene, that the shot was set up with an elderly, very tame buffalo, to whom the child was feeding the equivalent of buffalo cookies.  Still, that kid was one brave person to get near that animal.  

Allow me briefly to digress and say how much better the book, "Dances with Wolves", is than the move.  Not to imply that I don't like the movie and have warm feelings toward Kevin Costner!  Especially since he appeared in a Mr. Stadium Laundromat t-shirt in "The Upside of Anger".  Mr. Stadium laundroworld is in the literal and figurative shadown of the University of Michigan football stadium and is where I spent years of my life, doing laundry.  Before I became a full-fledged grown-up and got my own washer-drier.  

I've long believed that having your own washing machine made you a grown-up; and that having your own fruit trees meant you were settled down.  I've had both at my lovely house, which we've just sold.