One week this winter, 35 people were living in the cabin or in one of four teepees set up around it on a pine-forested hillside above Hebgen Lake. Three stunning mountain ranges surround the lake, with Yellowstone on a plateau to the west. There is plenty of room for sleeping bags in the loft above the main room of the cabin and Seeds for Peace, a nonprofit catering group, does all the (vegetarian) cooking. At night there's a big communal meeting for people to bitch and posture and plan the next day's activities.

For an environmentalist looking for action, this is something of a dream gig. Yellowstone, with its furry and sacred icons, is the perfect animistic shrine -- definitely a better work environment than a Superfund site in New Jersey.

Each day, at least a couple of two-member patrols cover each of three checkpoints to watch for bison on the move, or Montana Department of Livestock agents on the move against the bison. They travel by car and cross-country skis. Every patrol carries an FM radio for communication and a video camera to record whatever happens.

A lot of times, nothing much happens at all. Other times, the buffalo resist the loving embrace of the field campaign. "In 1999 we had round-the-clock patrols to keep the buffalo from leaving the park," recalled Dan Brister, 32, who spends his winters in the cabin and lives the rest of the year in Missoula, where he's a graduate student in environmental studies at the University of Montana. "It was very hard to do because the animals were hungry and you felt like you were starving them to death. But if they left they'd just head into the trap for the hay, and get slaughtered. Sometimes we'd give them a little shove."

The "little shove" meant walking to within 50 yards of the bison and clapping, usually enough to cause a retreat. Sometimes, though, the animals wouldn't budge. "When the buffalo's tail goes up in the air it means they are going to charge or discharge. So if they don't poop it shows they are pretty agitated and it's probably a good idea to get out of their way," says Brister.

Other dangers lurk as well. In 1999, Brister, Mease and two other activists were arrested when they tried to keep livestock agents from capturing two buffalo. The buffalo, trapped on a road between the activists and the agents, bolted up 12-foot-high snow berms on either side.

Brister was charged with negligent endangerment for "trying to cause death or serious injury to a state official by hazing a buffalo at him." The group's video footage absolved him of the charge, which was dropped.

Mease believes that the Yellowstone bison have "pure genetic links" to the Indian days. But this eugenic romanticism is based, like most of Yellowstone lore and the rest of our beliefs about nature, on a human construct.

"What is unique about YNP bison? You tell me," says Roffe. "If you go to the National Bison Range [a federal preserve in Moiese, Mont.], you can't tell the difference between those animals and the Yellowstone bison. But every year they round them up, give them blood tests and cull them. They are handled differently from the Yellowstone herd. Does that make them less valuable? There's nothing about wildlife management that isn't colored by our own perspectives."

The perspective of the Buffalo Field Campaign is colored by environmental concerns, but also by youthful enthusiasm and romance. Unlike the more ephemeral or relentlessly frustrating battles in the defense of nature, this one is a ground war with discernible, if debatable, results.

"It's a lot better now than it was when they were shooting every buffalo that came out of the park," says Brister. Better for Brister, definitely. Better for the buffalo? As a symbol, certainly. For the animals themselves? We may never know.

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