To Stand and Endure - Bison herd in Winter by wildlife artist Bonnie Marris

To Stand and Endure by Bonnie Marris.

 

This image shows the aftermath of the devastating Yellowstone fires on a monumental scale and with dramatic impact. In two previous paintings - New Beginnings and Bugles and Trumpets she has shown the effect of the fires.

 

"The buffalo had been through hell, literally, with the fire itself," Marris explains, "and the following winter was especially bad. Every year, but particularly that year, the buffalo have to make a choice - whether to stay in the meadows, where they use their heads in huge sweeping motions to dig for grass in the snow, or to go to the geyser basins, where the steam from the geysers would offer them warmth. It was a choice between expending their precious energy digging for food, or sacrificing the food for warmth."

 

The buffalo chose to move to the geyser basin. "It was a really spectacular sight," Marris says. "It's so profound that where they stood and endured that tremendous fire and smoke, they also had to stand and endure one of the longest winters of their lives amid the steam. The harsher the winters are, the more beautiful the geyser basins become. The heavy snows blanket everything; the geysers shape the blowing snow, and then it freezes in strange and wonderful formations. So there the buffalo stood amidst it all, like monoliths in the steam."

 

"This painting symbolizes the difficulties we all go through in our lives," she concludes, "but I hope it also inspires us, too, to stand and endure no matter what the adversity."

 

Print released 1992