Golden Sunset Bison Herd

A bison herd does not stay put. It grazes, moves on and comes back later, and over thousands of years that habit shaped the grasslands themselves. Bison favor grasses and leave many wildflowers alone, so prairie they have worked tends to come back richer in kinds of plants than prairie they never touched.

They also dig. Bison roll in the dirt to shed insects and loose hair, and bulls roll during the rut to show off, and the repeated rolling wears shallow bowls into the ground called wallows. After rain the wallows hold water, and different plants grow in them than on the ground around them. Old wallows can still be found on prairie where no bison has walked for more than a century.

Grazing fills most of a bison's day. The hump over its shoulders is muscle anchored to tall spines on the vertebrae, and it lets the animal swing its heavy head low, through grass in summer and through snow in winter.

The painting shows exactly that. A big bison stands at the center with its head down in pale gold grass, its shaggy coat rimmed with light, and the herd spreads out behind it toward a sun sitting right on the horizon, with dust and haze hanging over the plain.