Not quite an essay on the significance of the Bozeman activist event on Yellowstone buffalo

I must apologize to those readers who thought, like I thought, that I was going to engage in verbose, perhaps semi-poetic prose about my most uplifting night of local organizing in Bozeman, following our event with Mike Mease of Buffalo Field Campaign, on the Yellowstone bison.

Though I believe that I had one of my most exuberantly interesting evenings - especially before and after the event - last Wednesday, I simply don't have it in me to engage at the personal level in which I'm prone to engage. Our conversations were rich, but to give them texture here seems almost ludicrous. It would be as if one could understand what it feels like to be an eruption of Old Faithful. Sure, we could see it, smell it, but to have the point of view of that geyser is beyond us. Or, to imagine what it's like for me to give birth to someone else's child would be just as strange to understand. A conversation that rich and engaging, beyond the what, but to the body language, the place, the sense of moment, the sense of place where people come to these conversations, is beyond the scope of time I have or ability I have to render it.

So, all I can say is that it was wonderful, and we may have a real opportunity for a community of action and resistance in Bozeman. It's there for us who wish to make it so long as we dedicate ourselves to the work. And, unlike some moments during all my activism in Washington, DC, I think that that dedication may be there.

Once upon a time, I dreamed of the Young Romantics (a search of the archives or a google search might take you to some of the mysteries), and brought that to a not-quite-so-explicitly shared place in Yellowstone - not once but twice. Now, I dream of creating a space not unlike it, but tied directly not to our dreams, but to those real voices in our world who don't have a chance of being heard.

I believe real steps are being taken to facilitate that space.

That's all I have to write for now. We're on our way.

Love,
Jim