Buffalo Park
By Keene Short
September 14, 2017
Published in the Atticus Review
(Editor's Note: Keene Short wrote perhaps the most evocative, visionary and creative description of the fate of Buffalo Park's fabled buffalo. Below are just a few excerpts from Short's one-of-a-kind, most excellent essay on Buffalo Park. Many Thanks to Keene for allowing us to share excerpts from his work.)
(Keene Short is a writer and teacher in Moscow, Idaho. He is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing. Keene received an MA in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and two BA degrees in English and History at Northern Arizona University. He predominantly writes creative nonfiction, with adventures in fiction and poetry on the side. Keene has an abiding interest in twentieth century history, particularly the Cold War and political history. However, his interests and skills vary widely, ranging from research to cooking to photography.)
"In 1963, the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce enacted a plan to construct a wild west-themed amusement park on a large swath of land on McMillan Mesa in Flagstaff, Arizona, hoping to create a tourist attraction and boost Flagstaff’s economy. New York had Coney Island, California had Disneyland, almost every other city was close enough to one national park or monument, and everybody knew the Grand Canyon was starting to get a little dull, so the obvious solution was to fence in several square miles, carve dirt paths through the area, and let people pay to sit in authentic frontier-era stagecoaches driving through a combination zoo, museum, and amusement ride."
"I lived near Cedar Hill for twenty years, and went to Coconino High School right beneath it, so close that during lunch hours I could walk to and from Buffalo Park in time for my next class. I sometimes imagine those bison wandering down the hill to old Coconino High, confused, irritable, hungry."
"The bison roamed freely around town, making it far into Flagstaff, into residential areas and the grounds of an elementary school. They ate in people’s gardens, broke fences, trampled bushes and potted flowers, crossing boundaries nobody wanted crossed. Where they went, what property they destroyed, was unpredictable. For a while, the west was wild again as eight creatures seized their freedom, putting their hooves to the concrete."
"Riding down the dirt path, pushing my foot against the ground and somehow working my foot back up to the pedal in time to keep me going, using both hands to force the front wheel in the right direction, a wild bison leapt into the road in front of me. Yes, I told myself, those eight escaped bison started a colony of bison somewhere near Flagstaff, and they have lived as mountain bison the way mountain goats do, standing impossibly on rocky ledges on Mount Elden, leaping from boulder to boulder, charting their bisonography, eating, loving, reminiscing, and reciting their bisonology about their heroic godly ancestors who braved the storm and the cruel human world to recreate a bisontopia and live in never-ending bison bliss. And here was one of them, one of the free-thinking, highly evolved, thinner and stronger mountain bison glaring at me as I struggled to ride a bike in its direction, forcing me to swerve off-balance. That was how I ended up with a four-inch dirt-encrusted bloody gash on my arm, not because I couldn’t steer properly, but because of the bison returning to seize the park."
"So, I ride my bike, and I walk up the mountain, and I occasionally see deer in the woods, occasionally fall off my bike, get my feet twisted or simply forget to maintain constant confidence. I think of the possibility that the eight liberated bison really did escape to Mount Elden, deep in the Coconino National Forest, deep into the grey mossy boulders strewn with prickly pears and yuccas in the shade of ponderosa pine trees older than Flagstaff. Maybe the bison escaped, procreated, started a colony of mountain bison. Maybe they maintain elusiveness so well that we simply don’t know about them, something we’re on the edge of forgetting but still lurks in the backs of our brains. I like to imagine the mountain bison, calm massive critters unable to discern their size, thinking themselves squirrels and leaping marvelously through the rocks, looking south to the city and wondering why the smoke, why the noise, why the fuss? Then they leap onward without prediction, without intention, pulled by an unnamable, directionless momentum, a kind of freedom I still don’t dare to look for myself. "
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