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magazine / so06
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September/October 2006 issue |
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The
enchanted forest
Frogs pipe, woodpeckers knock and beavers clap their tails along the trails of Elk Island National Park. And then there are the bison.
Excerpt of story by Lisa Gregoire
I am 10 minutes from completing the Hayburger hiking loop
in Elk Island National Park when I round a corner and see it
on the trail 20 metres ahead: a chuffing brown wall of shaggy
shoulders and heads, deadly still in the poplar-lined passage
between me and my four-door sedan. A band of bison. All I hear
is the shushing leaves and my imminent cardiac arrest.
"OK, calm down," I think, rifling through 20 years
of survival memories in search of "bison encounter." Curl
up in a ball, cover your neck with your hands and play dead.
No, that’s for a grizzly bear attack. Stand still, wave your
arms, yell and throw stones. Geez, that’s for cougars. Stop,
drop and roll? I am stranded with these horned refrigerators
and I am petrified.
Elk Island is Canada’s only fenced-in national park and one
of its oldest wildlife sanctuaries. When the fumes and clatter
of Alberta’s broiling economy make my jaw clench, I drive 40
minutes east of my home in Edmonton to a rectangular respite
on the Yellowhead Highway with neither Rocky Mountains nor albertosaurus
bones. One tires of such gaudy splendour.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
For related facts and figures, visit CG’s Explorer Online
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