Trust

“What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?…You have made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.”

(Psalm 8:4,6-8)

We had close encounters with buffalo at different locations within Yellowstone National Park. We saw herds of them from a distance as we drove through the Lamar Valley. We saw one up close when it came to graze beside us while we were waiting for Old Faithful to erupt. And on our final day in the park, we had a buffalo walk right past our car. My husband was close enough to reach his hand out of the car window to touch it. Of course, he didn’t dare.

Yet, these amazing experiences almost never happened.

It is believed that millions of buffalo once roamed the Great Plains alongside the Native American tribes whose survival depended on them. But by the end of the 19th Century, these herds had been hunted to near extinction—with only several hundred buffalo left alive in North America.

Fearing the complete loss of the species, Congress finally passed a law prohibiting hunting inside Yellowstone. The park became a refuge for the buffalo, whose population has since rebounded to around 200,000.

One of which walked past us that morning in Yellowstone.