A couple of weeks ago, I found myself looking over the edge of a buffalo jump.
I was touring in Alberta with Gordon Belsher and Cynthia MacLeod and the night before, we'd played a show in Trochu (town motto: "Gateway to Hundreds of Miles of Empty Highway"). Trochu is a lovely town with a population of 900, give or take. Attendance at the show that night: 450. (If we drew the same ratio in Toronto, it would mean a month of sellout shows at Skydome. But what with trade shows, Blue Jays games, and whatnot, it's never available for a run like that.)
That night after the show we stayed at St. Ann Ranch COuntry Inn, which is, I have to say, one of the finest places for a touring performer in Canada to stay. An Alberta Heritage Site, the main mansion has thirty incredibly sumptuous rooms, and we were the only guests. Since Tom and Holly Fiere, the owners, live across the road, we had the place to ourselves - as good an excuse for a post-show kitchen party as you can have. So we invited Tom and Holly and a bunch of the people involved in running the show back to the ranch and the tunes and laughs went on till the wee hours.
Over breakfast the next morning (a sinfully delicious fruit cup, the recipe for which I stole, and French toast), Tom suggested we stop en route to our next show and visit Dry Island Buffalo Jump, about 20 minutes away.
There are a number of buffalo jumps in Alberta - I'm not sure exactly how many. The most famous, of course, is Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which may be the most colourful place name in the world. For those unfamiliar with the concept behind a buffalo jump, allow me to indulge in some sketchy but mostly accurate History of the Old West:
Back in the days when Indians were the only people on the Great Plains, they relied on the buffalo for just about everything: food, of course; hides for shelter and clothing; sinews for sewing and tying; and on and on. Buffalo were plentiful, ranging in unimaginably huge herds. But still, each individual animal was enormous and not easily killed.
Well, one day (June 12) a young Indian brave named Dances With Overbite had an idea. "Hey," he said, "You know that place where you ride along up a slight rise, and all of a sudden the earth falls away into a huge canyon and you have to slam on the binders because it snuck up on you and you didn't see it till it was almost too late? What if we organize a buffalo stampede, and drive them towards that? By the time they see the edge, it'll be crumbling under their hooves ... and you just know the buffalo at the back aren't gonna slow down in time."
And everybody agreed it seemed like a good plan, so the very next day they tried it. And sure enough, hundreds and hundreds of buffalo got to the edge of the cliff and just kept going, trying desperately to evolve wings in the few seconds before they hit the ground (it is not known how many were successful).
Dances With Overbite and his fellow braves stood at the top of the cliff, looking down at the carnage below - hundreds of dead and dying buffalo. Their leader, a wise old brave named Running Sore, turned to Dances With Overbite and said "Good plan. Now what? They're down at the bottom of the cliff, and we're up here."
Dances With Overbite nodded. "Guess we should have thought this part through a little better," he admitted, "And maybe had a few of us down at the bottom, huh? Still, it was a good plan. All we're doing now is tweaking."
So next time they had a few people at the bottom to act as a receiving party when buffalo began to rain down off the cliff. When the dust had cleared, once again the braves peered over the edge.
"Unbelievable," said Running Sore, shaking his head in amazement. "How do they not stand back a bit? What did they think, they'd be catching feathers? Think, people, think. Jesus." (Note: this actually happened. That's where Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump got its name.)
Anyway, third try (and subsequent tries) lucky, the plan worked like a dream, and Dances With Overbite became a revered figure. It is his profile you now see on the five-dollar chips at the First Nations Casino and Resort Complex.
So here we were, centuries later, rolling up to the edge of the Dry Island Buffalo Jump in a rented PT Cruiser and a Toyota Camry, much the same way the Indians did (except, of course, they all drove Dodge Dakota pickups). And I have to say, when you get there, you marvel at the ingenuity. I mean, you really don't see the cliffs till you're a few yards away, but then your knees go weak as you stand at the edge of a magnificent canyon. It's as breathtaking and beautiful as any place I've seen across this country.
One of the many reasons I love what I do is that I get to stumble upon treasures like that.
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