Back to Banff

Two decades ago, I attempted to take on the Waskahegan Trail, a 300-kilometre loop that starts and ends in Edmonton, traversing the farmland, valleys, and rolling prairies of central Alberta. A day and a half after I hiked out the front door, my right knee rebelled and I phoned my wife for a pickup. But a couple weeks later, sufficiently recovered, I decided to complete the trail in stages. That’s how I found myself walking westward inside the 2.2-metre-high game fence that surrounds Elk Island National Park and then coming to a sudden stop — staring at the massive head and bulky shoulders of a nonplussed, plus-sized bison.

Elk Island is home to about 1,000 plains and wood bison, a population that has served as a source for reintroduction programs in Canada, the United States, and Russia. After being hunted to the brink of extinction in the nineteenth century, the largest land mammal in North America is free to roam inside the enclosed, nearly 200-square-kilometre...