Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

The day after I went to the Dinosaur park, I drove down to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. The drive was about 2 hours and just as fascinating as the drive to Dinosaur park. I guess all drives out of Calgary are pretty much the same unless you head west.

Anyway, about an hour and a half into the drive I started to see
strange sticks coming out of the ridge on the horizon. It being Alberta, I just assumed they were oil derricks. But as I got closer and closer (but still 30 or so km away) more and more of them came into view. It seemed like waaay too many to be oil derricks, also they seemed to be way too tall and skinny. For a brief instant I considered it to be a horde of attacking Ents from Montana.

A bit farther down the road and I could start to make out some detail on these giants. “Are they moving? WTF? Ohhhh they're wind-mills. ... Wow there’re a lot of them.” Not wanting to really focus in and count while driving, I estimated there to be about 50 or so. I continued in to the Head-Smashed-In site.

Now I already had a feeling that I wouldn’t be super impressed with the Buffalo Jump. It’s just a cliff for crying out loud. So that’s probably why I got so distracted by the huge wind-farm. After I parked at the site parking lot, I got out my binoculars and counted 197 wind-mills. It was obvious though that there were more hiding behind the ridge.

Stifling my fascination with the massive wind-farm, I went up to the Head-Smashed-In site. The museum is actually really cleverly built into the side of the cliff. Good job Mr. Architect.

Actually, there was one kind of strange over-sight to the design of the museum. You walk in on the ground floor, but it’s designed to be viewed from top-to-bottom, so you have to rabbit around taking a few stair cases and elevators to the top. Then you go outside the cliff, uh, Buffalo Jump.

The view from the observation area is cool.
But you’re not looking at the actual jump if you’re looking at the view, you’re looking at the last things the buffalo looked at. The buffalo jump is actually the 10m tall cliff right next to you. Which, is actually fascinating in it’s plainness. It’s a great example of how something can be so dependent on context. By itself it’s just a cliff, given the context and the sites 5,000 year history it’s actually quite amazing.

Once I was done up on the cliff (taking pictures of the wind-farm), I wandered through the museum. I ate a Buffalo-smokey because I figured it was culturally the right-thing to do. Bought my post-card, and jumped in the car to head to the wind-farm.

The wind-farm was actually a bunch of wind-farms. I guess it’s easy for the power companies to realise a site is a good wind-farm site when other companies are putting up their wind-mills. Pays to be a lazy prospector.

I found a small ‘viewing area’ which provided a bit closer look at the wind-sucking giants. The site said the largest wind-farm (aka: group of wind-mills owned by one company) was at 114 wind-mills. But in the next field there were some more under construction with the same logo on it, so I’m guessing the plaque was out of date. Sadly, because there were so many different companies represented I have no idea how many wind-mills there actually were. I know my count of 197 was low, but I can’t be sure by how much.

I think wind power is really cool. But, I can’t believe we can understand all the effects it has on the environment. Sure, right at the site it’s pretty minimal, but if we take all that energy out of the wind, well... if we left the energy in the wind, where would it end up? Is there some place in the middle of the country that now has perfectly still air because we took away their little bits of wind energy? I know that’s not the case, but it sort of shows my point. Weather is a complex system, and we’re minutely changing some of the variables. But, because it’s a complex system, all you have to do is minutely change a few variables to completely fuck with it. I love green power, but I hope wind-mills don’t destroy the universe.