Paul Rousseau
Without Boundaries
There is a brutality and beauty to the callous indifference of nature. I stand in the hardness of survival as a pack of wolves, eyes feral and teeth bared, take down an aged male bison, the bison stumbling into the cold waters of a winter river, resigned and bleeding. He pauses, glances at the wolves, and in a final act of defiance, stomps his front hooves. Then, his head slumps, he breathes a murmured grunt, and collapses. The wolves race to the dying carcass, rip the weathered pelt, and devour the still-warm flesh. A swarm of ravens and a lone coyote guard the periphery, waiting to claim the leftover spoils. It is in these harrowing moments, my heart burdened with the savagery of the brazen wilderness, that I stand in awe of the beauty and tragedy of life, and of who and what we are amidst the interconnected rawness of nature, where economic and social echelons are irrelevant and absent.
