Sunshine streams into the kitchen through the front windows on the porch. This winter Siegfried is my only companion. We take an active interest in each other’s lives.

Siegfried is six years old. His sister Sasson died young of a liver ailment. They were named after Siegfried Sasson, the British author and poet who came of age in Flanders in the crucible of the Great War, 1914-18.

Late in the afternoon I visit the Hayden Valley a few miles south of the house. The windy weather of the previous few days has created sastrugi...a snow surface created by the simultaneous erosion and deposition of wind blown snow.

As the sun sinks lower the buffalo shadows grow longer. The buffalo graze on the poor thin dried grass along the wind swept hilltop.