I could taste the paper when I licked my finger for traction. Was I enthralled with the turbulent history of this animal and my country or was I relating to the adventures of this modern day renaissance man? Maybe, I couldn’t separate the two aspects all together. Which in my estimation was exactly the author’s idea.
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella will make you yearn for adventures in the few far wildernesses available to be traveled in the United States. If you are, like myself, an American his writing will make you swell with emotions of lust and pride. Hubarus in a country who set in Manifest Destiny, your ego wearing the crest of your people who were brave enough to move forward down this unknown westerly path.
I have let more people borrow this book than any other I have ever had, one of them went on his first hunting adventure after reading it. He isn’t an adult onset hunter but he has an idea of the lifestyle.
In the very next chapter Rinella’s writing will draw you close to becoming an activist, admonishing the evils of westward expansion and our turbid relationship with the Bison. How can we stake our country's greatness on a history of massacre the likes of which a modern American can’t fathom?
Such is the dichotomy of being a modern american with knowledge of our country’s past. It is the history steeped in ingenuity, bravery and freedom on one hand, while using the other to destroy the people that lived on this continent and drive a species to the brink of extinction.
Rinella not only balances this scale but the scale of the people of North America and the Bison’s relationship in general.
This Book is a piece that should be read as to better understand the relationship between the human race and the nature that surrounds us.