Of Wild Winds Buffalo Preserve and Ancient Sea Shells

by Sheree Cammer
Albany Meeting

On a recent train trip through the midwest, my cousin and his wife introduced me to the Wild Winds Buffalo Preserve in Fremont, Indiana. Bill Three Paws Elias drove our tour in a pickup truck. I had the best seat: front seat passenger. The herd was placidly grazing, their noses buried in the sweet red clover blossoms. They ambled along together from time to time in the ample fenced paddock, one of seven. They are regenerating habitat as they have done for millennia, grazing the prairie grasses without overgrazing, while fertilizing them with manure. People eat meat from the culls, and help care for the herd. 

“They tell us when they want to move,” Bill drawled. “The whole herd will come up to the gate and let me know they’re ready for fresh pasture.”

Some buffalo wandered freely over to the truck. One buffalo approached within inches of my face. Our eyes met, frankly, kin greeting kin. The afterimage remains. Those eyes, so big and depthless, kind, and wise transformed me: I am to speak for life. I am to read that gaze, and intuit and convey An Urgent Call to People Everywhere: Regeneration. 

Bill drove us to what he called a special place, where buffalo cow skulls were carefully arranged. Native people had gathered there. Prayer flags fluttered, honoring the seven directions: east, south, west, north, up (sky), down (earth) and  “The seventh color, purple,” says Bill, “is for the most important direction: the center.”

Bill paints us a picture: Sometimes a cow and her calf will come and touch their noses to a skull; it’s like they’re visiting a gravesite.

Last week I met a young man. He disappeared and returned in a few hours with a gift: fossilized sea creatures. The Ancient Ones. Our Ancestors.

In the days after, I found my thumb fit perfectly into the concave of one of the bivalve shells. Lately I’ve discovered the shell imprint of the rock fits my lips perfectly. Songs began to come, evolving from “I am Calling You” to “Life is Calling Us.” 

Is this message from the Ancient Ones, Our Ancestors:

What is lasting and true and good? 

What is All-Powerful, unfolding, evolving, growing? 

The Life Force/The All-Good, the ocean of light completely covering the ocean of darkness.

Regeneration of life and our spirits: Antidote to self-annihilation by heroin, suicide, and beautiful lives lost.

A mainstream cultural turnaround to embrace our common unity, regenerating life, to being potent, purposeful, and powerful. 

I touch the fossil imprint; Buffalo touch the skulls of their ancestors.

In the name of all that is holy, may I/we live in service to all life.