BOZEMAN, Mont. – There are business trips, and then there are business trips.

This one’s a doozy.

For the past few minutes, I’ve been staring slack-jawed at the scene being played out before me. It’s like something straight out of “Dances With Wolves.”

Thousands of bison graze contentedly on lush green grass in a high mountain valley. The sound of the munching cows and the grunting of their calves make for a nice, peaceful soundtrack.

The snow-capped peaks of Gallatin Mountains rise in the distance and a few clouds are beginning to clabber up above them. In an hour or two, it will be raining cats and dogs in the high country.

For a Texas rancher struggling through a year of historic drought, the green grass and rain clouds are a sight for sore eyes — even if you have to travel 1,500 miles to catch the show. And for a shirttail bison producer with fewer than 100 head, watching 3,000 buffalo roam across such a gorgeous setting comes within a peach fuzz of being a spiritual experience.

We’re at Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch, located about halfway between Bozeman and Big Sky, Mont., and about an hour’s drive north of Yellowstone National Park. We’ve come here for the summer conference of the National Bison Association.

After sitting through two days of board meetings and conference presentations, the field trip is a grand finale to the convention.

The folks at the Flying D have invited all 300 attendees out for lunch and the herd cooperated by meeting us in the front pasture for this Kodak moment.

Any time you get a bunch of ag folks in one place, the weather is a primary subject of conversation. That’s especially the case at this conference, because producers in the North, Northwest and Midwest have been battling floods, while those of us in the South and Southwest are baking to death.

It has snowed on two of the three mornings we have been up here and we’re dreading the prospect of resetting our thermostats to handle the Texas heat.

We’re also dreading the prospect of finding more hay to feed our little herds when we get home. The last hay I bought before leaving Texas had been outside in the weather for a year and it cost $80 per round bale.

I bought five bales. They’ll be gone in a few days.

The grass in this meadow is knee-high in some places, so the Flying D herd doesn’t have to worry about picking through half-moldy hay.

They do have to deal with Montana winters, but scientists say a buffalo doesn’t begin to suffer from cold stress until the temperature hits minus-30 degrees. These animals are fat and sassy, with the whole growing season ahead of them.

Anyway, I thought you’d like to know that the weather and the scenery surely are nice up here. We’re leaving for home in a few hours and I hear the forecast for Central Texas during the next several afternoons will be as high as 102 degrees.

See you at the coffee shop when we get home. I believe I’ll have iced tea.

Donnis Baggett is publisher and editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald and a weekend bison rancher. Email him at dbaggett@wacotrib.com.