Collage of images by Tberning and Joshua Brown
Sanctuary for All Life (Second Edition)
available from Cascabel Books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble
Saguaro Juniper covenant
“In acquiring private governance of land, we agree to cherish its earth, waters, plants and animals in a way that promotes the health, stability, and diversity of the whole community. This entails attentive stillness to meet and know the land as an active presence. It entails study, observation, shared reflection, and cumulative corporate experience to increase and bequeath our understanding of ecosystem health, stability and diversity. Stewardship is the distinctively human way of bonding into one society with all who share in the land’s life, which is the foundation for instituting a biocentric ethic among humankind.”
We suggest you start with Part 1 of this series.
Summary
Having finished his work in the Sanctuary Movement, Jim Corbett allowed his focus to broaden, bringing his system of ethics to the land itself. Jim had gathered many people around him throughout the Sanctuary days: a group that shared a deep, abiding love for the more-than-human world. Together they would establish a herding community – a herd in which they would all be members – grounded in a practice of ‘pastoral symbiotics’, and guided by a prescient ecological covenant: a bill of rights for the land.
From Future Ecologies, this is Goatwalker, Part Three: Saguaro Juniper
If you’d like to get in touch with the folks at Saguaro Juniper, you can reach them here
Ready for Part 4? Click here
Saguaro Juniper range (Photo by Susan L. Newman)
Show Notes
This episode features Ann Russel, Tom Orum, Nancy Ferguson, John Fife, Pat Corbett, Jim Corbett, and Miriam Davidson. Narration was by Phillip Buller.
As of August 2021, Jim Corbett’s books, both “Goatwalking” and “Sanctuary for All Life” have been re-issued as new 2nd editions, with paperback and e-books available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Find photos of Jim on his memorial page with Saguaro Juniper
Music by Satorian, Hidden Sky, and Sunfish Moon Light. Goatwalking Theme by Ryder Thomas White and Sunfish Moon Light.
This episode was produced by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski.
Special thanks to Ilana Fonariov, Teresa Maddison, Susan Tollefson, John Fife, Pat Corbett, Nancy Ferguson, Tom Orum, Gary Paul Nabhan, Gita Bodner, Amanda Howard and the University of Arizona, Charles Menzies, Sadie Couture, Phil Buller and Jan Adler, Michael Smith and Cathy Suematsu, Danny Elmes, and Susan L. Newman
This series was recorded on the territory of the Tohono O’odham, and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territory of the Penelakut, Hwlitsum, Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples. It’s important to acknowledge that the public lands that Jim would walk his goats on are also stolen Indigenous lands, as are the lands we live on.
Citations
Corbett, J. (1992). Goatwalking. Penguin Books
Corbett, J. (2005) Sanctuary for All Life: Wildland Pastoralism and the Peaceable Kingdom. Howling Dog Press (Cascabel Books 2nd Ed.)
Davidson, M. (1979). Miriam Davidson papers. University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections (MS 433)
Davidson, M. (1988). Convictions of the Heart. Univ. of Arizona Press
Orum, T., et al. (2016) Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) Mortality and Population Regeneration in the Cactus Forest of Saguaro National Park: Seventy-Five Years and Counting. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0160899. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.016089
West, M., et al (2017, June). The Valley View #6 (Cascabel Newsletter)
Witt, L. (1985, May 5). On The Line, Chicago Tribune Sunday Edition
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If you like what we do, and you want to help keep it ad-free, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Pay-what-you-can (as little as $1/month) to get access to bonus monthly mini-episodes, stickers, patches, a community Discord chat server, and more. This season, we’re taking a tour of some of our Seaweed Sojourners, with the help of Josie Iselin.
Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil- Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:02
You're listening to Season Three of Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 00:08
Hi folks. If you're joining us for the first time, you've found yourself three episodes deep into a four part series. If before we get started, you'd prefer a bit more background, I recommend you scroll back in the Future Ecologies feed to "Goatwalker: On Errantry" and part two, "Sanctuary". We've got links to both in the show notes. Over those two episodes, we met Jim Corbett, a goatherd, philosopher and catalyst of the Sanctuary Movement: a modern day Underground Railroad, transporting Central American refugees into the United States during the 1980s. Throughout his years milking goats and smuggling refugees, Corbett had drawn together a remarkable community who shared a deep, abiding love for the more than human world. This episode begins with two of those individuals. My co-host, Adam will take it from here.
Adam Huggins 01:10
Up until this point, in this series, we've discussed the life of Jim Corbett, his philosophy of errantry, and the start of the Sanctuary Movement. Now though, I'd like to talk for a few minutes about cacti. Every year, Nancy Ferguson and Tom Orum trek out to Saguaro National Park to administer a census for cacti. If you were to ask them why, this is what they'd say:
Nancy Ferguson 01:38
We inherited the study –
Tom Orum 01:39
It was an accident. [laughs]
Adam Huggins 01:43
The story behind this annual ritual is a study that dates back to before the Second World War.
Tom Orum 01:48
In 1939, the Saguaros out at Saguaro National Park were tall and huge and beautiful. And they had started to die. And the initial conclusion was it was bacterial necrosis or bacterial rot.
Adam Huggins 02:08
At the time, the University of Arizona had some land directly adjacent to the park, which was still a national monument.
Tom Orum 02:15
And so they devoted an entire square mile of that area for Saguaro research. In the fall of '41, they actually surveyed the area, and they put a wooden stake by every single Saguaro in the square mile, and there were 15,000 of them. So it was a huge area, and they divided it into half, and the northern half was their control, and the southern half every Saguaro that was showing the black ooze of rot – of bacterial necrosis – they cut down, chopped into pieces, and buried in big pits.
Adam Huggins 03:01
After all of this effort, it turned out there actually wasn't much difference in response between the treated area in the south and the control area in the north.
Tom Orum 03:10
So then they said, "Well, we can't keep up monitoring all 15,000 plants. But what we'll do is we'll pick six 10 acre plots, and we'll keep following those three in the north half and three in the south half". And those then were followed every year.
Adam Huggins 03:31
Tom and Nancy first started helping out with the study in 1979, under a plant pathologist named Stan Alcorn. When Alcorn passed away in 1999, they had inherited one of the longest running Natural History studies in North America. For the uninitiated, saguaros, species epithet Carnegiea gigantea, are the iconic columnar cactus of the US Southwest.
Nancy Ferguson 03:56
So rather than short and fat, they're a column that gets taller and taller – 30 feet high eventually. And as they age, they put out arms, and at the very top of the column and at the tip of the arms is where they produce the flowers and the seeds.
Tom Orum 04:15
So the way they look they look like a person with their hands up signaling like a –
Nancy Ferguson 04:20
It's just a feeling
Tom Orum 04:20
– field goal in football or something like that. So all of the vocabulary ends up being like anthropomorphized. So you're talking about the arms rather than the branches, and you're talking about the ribs.
Nancy Ferguson 04:34
And it's corrugated so that when it's a drought, they sort of shrivel in and lose diameter, and those sections sort of compress a little. And then a good rain comes and they get rehydrated and it can swell up and become rather smooth around the outside.
Adam Huggins 04:53
Saguaros are the giant green churros of the desert. You've almost certainly seen them depicted somewhere in popular culture, perhaps as the backdrop for Wile E. Coyote's fruitless pursuit of the Roadrunner in Looney Tunes. Capable of living over 150 years, they are the characteristic species of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southeastern California through much of southern Arizona.
Tom Orum 05:16
What's special about the Sonoran Desert is we have two rainy seasons. It's not like the Mojave – winter rain. Not like the Chihuahua – summer rains. But it's in between and getting both. And that's rather crucial to Saguaro germination and establishment and making through the first two or three years. The first couple of years are really tough because they don't have that water storage tissue developed.
Adam Huggins 05:44
Over the years, scientists studying saguaros have learned a lot about their role in ecosystems. They're considered to be a keystone species. For example, much like trees in a forest, the Saguaro is a magnet for woodpeckers and flickers. These industrious birds excavate holes in the cactus
Tom Orum 06:01
Then the Saguaro reacts by forming callus tissues, so that it forms what we call a boot. And all sorts of birds use those holes for nesting and habitat, and so forth.
Adam Huggins 06:15
Many desert species pollinate so wild flowers and eat sawara fruit. But the white winged dove is among the most important the doves will make their nests in Palo Verde trees, near Saguaros.
Tom Orum 06:27
And then when they lay their eggs and the chicks come out, just about the time the Saguaro fruit is ripe. And so the white winged does eat this Saguaro fruit with the seeds, and then they regurgitate and feed their squabs the seed, but they're sloppy feeders.
Adam Huggins 06:44
Those regurgitated seeds of the Saguaro fruit, land in the soil around the Palo Verde, and find an ideal habitat for germination. In fact, Palo Verdes and other leguminous trees, like mesquite, are considered to be nurse plants for the Saguaro. Meaning that a Saguaro growing up under one of these trees has a much better chance of surviving its first few years than one growing out in the open. Even after they're dead, Saguaros continue to support the ecosystem, much like fallen logs in a forest.
Nancy Ferguson 07:14
When you walk up to it, you're just enveloped with the smell of the decomposition. And it's unlike anything that I've ever smelled before. And the whole thing is humming. But it doesn't actually move. I didn't see that. But you know, there's such a hum of the, all the insect activity inside that it's, it's alive in a very different way.
Adam Huggins 07:45
The annual Saguaro census has had a number of focuses over the years. But the questions Tom and Nancy are trying to answer have a lot to do with something botanists call recruitment.
Adam Huggins 08:02
Which is a fancy way of talking about the next generation of cacti. New recruits are plants that have germinated and survived those tough first years to become part of the Saguaro population. The reason Tom and Nancy are so focused on this issue is that since 1993, only five new Saguaro plants have become established in the entire study area.
Tom Orum 08:25
We found one last spring, the one before that was in 2015. And then there were just one or two in the last decade. We're not seeing them, we're not seeing the little ones.
Adam Huggins 08:39
This might sound alarming, and it might be alarming. But the great thing about long term studies is that they give us perspective. In the first decades of the study, the 1940s and 1950s, there was similarly very low recruitment, just like after 1993. But between the 1960s and the 1990s, there was a huge population boom, possibly because those years tended to be wetter than average. And because Saguaros are so long lived, they can weather long droughts, both in terms of water and recruitment.
Tom Orum 09:12
I think they're gonna be all right. What they have going for them is their long age, so they can span long periods of drought, and then expand that. Who knows, you know, one doesn't know what climate change is gonna mean. That's, that's the big thing.
Adam Huggins 09:31
And so, Tom and Nancy continue to volunteer their time to check in on the Saguaros every year, and to document them as they live and die and are hopefully, born again
Adam Huggins 09:52
For a podcast called Future Ecologies. We haven't really spoken very much about ecology in this series up until now. Tom and Nancy's work with Saguaros might feel far removed from Jim Corbett and goatwalking and Sanctuary. But as I've said, I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of the people involved in Sanctuary also maintain deep relationships with the more-than-human world. Tom and Nancy devoted their careers and now their retirement to working with plants. John Fife is a consummate hunter and outdoorsman. Ann Russell became a marine biologist, and Gary Paul Nabhan, would become the preeminent ethnobotanist for the Southwest, as well as a celebrated author and activist. And these are just some of the people I spoke to.
Adam Huggins 10:39
In the years after Sanctuary wound down, Jim and Los Cabreros Andantes would pivot from refugee smuggling, to applying the principles of sanctuary and Jim's developing philosophy of pastoral synbiotics to the land itself. They would create their own sanctuary in the land where Saguaros grew up under the shade of Juniper trees. What they created there persists to this day, and provides a refuge for those who seek the enduring stillness of the desert.
Adam Huggins 11:11
But can this community survived the challenges ahead and keep the promises that they've made to one another and to the land. In other words, will they be able to support the next generation of herders, the new recruits for Jim's vision of a sanctuary for all life.
Adam Huggins 11:30
From Future Ecologies This is Goatwalker, Part Three: Saguaro Juniper.
Adam Huggins 11:58
On our second day in Arizona, our friend Teresa dropped associate producer Ilana Fonariov and I off at the start of a rough dirt road in the small town of Cascabel Arizona. Susan Tollefson and her pickup truck where they're waiting for us. Susan has been the keeper of the Hermitage at the Cascabel Conservation Association for a number of years now, although Jim passed away long before she arrived. We packed into her truck and she started slowly down the dirt road leading to the Hermitage. The land was stunning, rolling hills dotted with Saguaros and ocotillos, interrupted by dry washes. We entered through a cattle gate next to a grove of contorted mesquite trees and an old windmill. Unloading our gear, we were welcomed into a small handsome shelter with a bed and a desk inside. On the desk was Pat Corbett's personal copy of a book I've been desperately trying to get my hands on for a couple of years. Jim's swan song entitled: 'Sanctuary for All Life'. With the book in hand, we settled in for a few days of reading and sojourning in the desert stillness, trying to get to know the place – and Jim's ghost – a little better.
Adam Huggins 13:26
As journalist Miriam Davidson was wrapping up interviews with Jim for her own book, 'Convictions of the Heart'. She asked him what he thought he would do after Sanctuary.
Jim Corbett 13:36
I think that some of the things we're doing with regard to land redemption. Well, the current work we're doing in that direction may or may not come to fruition are pretty important. And so I probably will continue to pursue that.
Adam Huggins 13:54
This cryptic response prompted a follow up question. What did he mean by "land redemption"?
Ann Russell 13:59
Well, this, this has to do with efforts to get a group together to buy a ranch, which would permit individual participants to have their own acreage within this system, that would be their private property. At the same time, having considerable common management of other aspects of land use, develop a bill of rights for the land, that would protect the community of plants and animals already there as this other community settles in and would work out particularly ways for human beings to be part of a wildland community without destroying or or seriously altering it – where their livelihood could be integrated in a harmonious way, rather than being an intervention, and a destructive force
Adam Huggins 14:59
With the conclusion of the Sanctuary trial, Jim would finally get the opportunity to try and put these ideas into practice. Pat and Jim relocated from Tucson, to this small town of Cascabel to the east, in the San Pedro River Valley. They bought a piece of fertile Riverside land, where Pat could keep horses and Jim could keep his goats. They immediately recognized that the desert wild lands in and around Cascabel were special.
Pat Corbett 15:26
We saw the land out there. And then Jim started to think about how can he manage to get this land preserved. And then he started talking to Tom and Nancy, because Tom has kind of the brilliant, how-to-make-it-happen-financially man, alongst with Nancy.
Adam Huggins 15:43
Tom and Nancy had kept a low profile during the Sanctuary years, with Tom acting as the debt coordinator for Pat and Jim's refugee smuggling efforts.
Pat Corbett 15:52
They're just incredible people who do an incredible job of quietly making things happen. So he told them about taking a hike up one of the ridges here, where you can see a Saguar was growing under a Juniper tree, with the Juniper being the nurse tree for the Saguaro. And Nancy was just enthralled with this, and she said later that was all it took to get her involved.
Nancy Ferguson 16:15
And one of the things I had said to him early on was that, you know, if we get some land, I'm really interested in having it be a place that has Saguaros. And so sure enough, some time later, he came in and said, I found a place that not only has Saguaros, but they're growing under Juniper trees. And those are usually very separate ecosystems. It was like, whoa, that's really different. And within a month's time, we were out in Cascabel of looking at this place where sure enough, there were Saguaros and Juniper trees acting as the nurse trees for Saguaros. Then we went and put together Saguaro Juniper as a way to start buying land in Cascabel.
Adam Huggins 17:02
This was the birth of the Saguaro Juniper Corporation.
Pat Corbett 17:06
And Jim and Tom and Nancy were able to get a pretty good sized group of people together to come up with the money to purchase a parcel of deeded land, and that became Saguaro Juniper.
Tom Orum 17:19
The first purchase was in '88. And that was just 135 acres with 16 people.
Adam Huggins 17:28
Those 135 acres included the beautiful Hotsprings Canyon, a tributary of the San Pedro River. And this small acreage was only the beginning. From Jim's years of goatwalking, he'd become convinced that the best way to live in a symbiotic, non-violent partnership with the more-than-human world was as a herder: as an integral part of a herd. And to his mind, the only way to recreate a nomadic herding community in modern day North America was to secure enough land to support the herd and the herders without causing ecological damage. In the arid West, this meant somehow acquiring a lot of land, because it takes a huge area to support even a small herd sustainably. 135 acres simply wasn't enough. It was around this time that Jim would leave goats behind, transitioning instead to cow herding.
Pat Corbett 18:26
Well, we came down here with goats. And, well, let's see... the lions ate some of them. And then both of us were getting to the point where we felt like we needed to skim the cream off the milk. Well, it's a lot easier to skim the cream off cow's milk, because it rises much more quickly, and it's more visible, and so it's easier to skim. And so we decided we'd start drinking cow's milk, we kind of retired the goats. And we - finally we got down to a man goat and the poor thing was so lonesome, so we decided to turn her up with the horses so that she'd have some companionship, and we did. But unfortunately, eventually after we'd done that for a while a lion got her, but at least she had company in her last years.
Adam Huggins 19:09
There were other reasons for this transition as well. For one, as Jim would write in Sanctuary for All Life:
Sanctuary for All Life 19:16
Personally, I'm also more inclined to favor cows now, since the cow has become the West's most commonly denounced animal pariah.
Adam Huggins 19:26
In addition to the sense of kinship that Jim felt with the maligned animals, this transition from goat to cow reflected Jim's shift in focus from personal to collective errantry. In fact, due to its Judeo-Christian mysticism, and preoccupation with cows, Sanctuary for All Life is affectionately subtitled "The Cowbalah of Jim Corbett".
Sanctuary for All Life 19:50
Sanctuary for All Life continues the exploration of pastoral symbiotics that Goatwalking initiated. Where goatwalking is primarily a form of personal errantry, the focus of Sanctuary for All Life is wildland stewardship, by a covenant formed community, specifically, stewardship on Saguaro Juniper range land by Saguaro Juniper herders.
Adam Huggins 20:19
And those herders were herding cows, because of all of the advantages cows had over goats, the greatest of all was their unique ability – socio-politically – to unlock enough public land for a small herding community to support itself.
Tom Orum 20:35
When they switched from goats, the cows that – it was both good and bad. I mean, he could just get out with his goats and, and go, but you can't quite do that with cows. But on the other hand, you have to have cows in order to have the lease.
Adam Huggins 20:53
Let me explain that last part. The vast majority of the land in the arid west of the United States is public land, administered by the US Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, or another governmental entity. But that doesn't mean that this land is protected. Far from it. Across much of this area, extending from the Borderlands of the Sonoran Desert, North throughout the Great Basin to the border with Canada, livestock grazing isn't just allowed, it's mandated.
Tom Orum 21:24
In order to hold a lease, you have to have a brand and you have to have cattle, and you're supposed to graze it.
Adam Huggins 21:33
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, livestock grazing is promoted, protected and supported by federal agencies on approximately 270 million acres of public land in the 11 Western states. Ranchers lease huge amounts of land by paying modest fees at below market rates. In other words, ranching on public lands in the arid West is highly subsidized. And while many ranchers have adopted practices to mitigate the harm that cattle can cause to wild lands, they represent the minority. Throughout the history of the United States, poor grazing practices have predominated, resulting in ecological damage and degradation at a massive scale. Despite this damage, the heavy subsidization, the marginal amount of actual production involved, and the fact that most ranchers can barely make enough money to keep ahead of their debts, this system remains largely in place to this day. But Jim and the Saguaro Juniper associates recognized an opportunity in this dysfunctional state of affairs.
Adam Huggins 22:40
With a herd of cattle, a little bit of capital and the promise to graze, they could lease the public lands surrounding the 135 acres Saguaro Juniper plot, and steward it collectively. Jim would be able to apply his philosophy of pastoral synbiotics at a landscape scale.
Sanctuary for All Life 22:58
Grazing use that is in harmony with the untamed biotic community, and that displaces injurious commercial grazing is therefore the key to the redemption of these lands.
Adam Huggins 23:12
So when Jim Corbett spoke of land redemption, he was proposing nothing less than the restoration of the wild lands of the arid West, through covenant community and cow human symbiosis. And with 1000s of acres in and around Hotsprings Canyon now at his disposal, he set out to see if it could be done.
Adam Huggins 23:49
On the second day of our retreat, Ilana and I set out from the Hermitage to explore Hotsprings Canyon. It was a cloudless day, and the canyon walls stood in stark relief against the open skies. It didn't take me long to realize that the Sonoran Desert is a botanist's dream. what looks like a tangle of dry brush at a distance opens up into a world of plucky barrel cacti, stoic Agaves, trailing wild grapes, elegant Daturas, and gregarious jojobas, and wild flowers of breathtaking variety and color. Raptors, songbirds, toads, scorpions, grasshoppers, rattlesnakes, and even a desert tortoise greeted us on the trail as we made our way up the wash. And after a couple of dry miles, we heard the siren song of all desert travelers: the trickle of a creek.
Adam Huggins 24:45
The cool water was a welcome reprieve to the increasing heat of the day. And I couldn't help but notice the quality of the riparian vegetation, and the water, and just the ecosystem in general. Honestly, it was hard to believe that Saguaro Juniper runs a herd of cattle and these lands. But clearly they take great care to avoid inflicting damage on the riparian zones. If there were scars from grazing, my eyes just weren't trained enough to spot them. The entire Canyon pulsed with life under a canopy of Ash, Sycamore, and Acacia trees – sheltering us beneath the desert sun. We began climbing the walls of the canyon, and it didn't take us long before we found what we were looking for. There, overlooking the canyon below, was a Saguaro and a Juniper growing side by side.
Adam Huggins 26:10
In the late 1980s, Jim's approach to wildland conservation through cattle grazing was ahead of its time. Allan Savory was just beginning to preach his gospel of Holistic Management, and it would take years for his ideas to become popularized. Saguaro Juniper was a novel experiment for its time, and the grazing aspect wasn't the only unique feature. Jim and the Saguaro Juniper community also wrote up and adopted a bill of rights for the land, formerly known as the Saguaro Juniper covenant.
Sanctuary for All Life 26:43
The Saguaro Juniper covenant principles: a bill of rights for the land.
Sanctuary for All Life 26:49
One: the land has a right to be free of human activity that accelerates erosion.
Sanctuary for All Life 26:57
Two: native plants and animals on the land have a right to life with a minimum of human disturbance.
Sanctuary for All Life 27:06
Three: the land has the right to evolve its own character from its own elements without scarring from construction, or the importation of foreign objects dominating the scene.
Sanctuary for All Life 27:21
Four: the land has a preeminent right to the preservation of its unique and rare constituents and features.
Sanctuary for All Life 27:31
Five: the land, its water, rocks, and minerals, its plants and animals, and their fruits and harvest have a right never to be rented, sold, extracted, or exported as mere commodities.
Sanctuary for All Life 27:48
In acquiring governance of the land, we agree to cherish its Earth, waters, plants, and animals in a way that promotes the health, stability and diversity of the whole community. This entails attentive stillness to meet and know the land is an active presence. It entails study, observation, shared reflection, and cumulative experience to increase and bequeath our understanding of ecosystem health, stability and diversity. It entails symbiotic naturalization into the land community – a communion of actual nurture and shelter.
Sanctuary for All Life 28:35
As elaborated by these entailments, fully accountable governance – stewardship – is the distinctly human way of bonding into one society with all who share in the land's life, which is the foundation for instituting a bio-centric ethic among humankind.
Adam Huggins 29:03
This is a remarkable document for its time. The idea that non-human species and the more-than-human world in general, have rights that human communities must respect is embedded in most, if not all indigenous cultures. But in the dominant culture of settler colonialism, the idea that any rights could or should be extended to nature was and continues to be a radical notion. The famous conservationist, Aldo Leopold, entered into this conversation when he suggested in 1949, that:
Aldo Leopold 29:38
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Adam Huggins 29:48
In the modern era, many point to a seminal article by USC Professor Christopher Stone, published in 1972, and entitled "Should Trees Have Standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects". But it wasn't until the dawn of a new millennium that a small burrough in Pennsylvania would become the first jurisdiction in the United States and in the world, to formally codify rights of nature into law. Shortly thereafter, in 2008, the South American nation of Ecuador would famously become the first to enshrine the rights of nature into its constitution, making the Indigenous word Pachamama iconic for the rights of nature movement.
Adam Huggins 30:29
From 2008 to the present day, there has been a cascade of similar declarations and laws passed at all levels of governments around the world, concerning everything from rivers to whole territories. But in 1991, when the Saguaro Juniper covenant was adopted, it was a complete anachronism. Looking back, Jim was so prescient – responding to the crises of the moment, with solutions that wouldn't enter the mainstream until long after his own death. Even if Saguaro Juniper had been an utter failure, the covenant document alone would represent an incredible contribution to the evolution of settler thought on the rights of nature. That being said, Saguaro Juniper was and is anything but a failure, even though it could probably never have lived up to Jim's astronomic ideals. After having spent much of the '80s covertly naturalizing Central American refugees into the United States, Jim had set out to accomplish nothing short of finding a way to naturalize entire human communities within wildland ecosystems.
Adam Huggins 31:44
How exactly would he do this? In Goatwalking, Jim explored sojourning and human-goats symbiosis as a means of hiding the world within the world – of escaping, if only for a few weeks, into a pastoral solitude that opened the way to what he called errantry. With Saguaro Juniper and Sanctuary For All Life, Jim explored the covenant-bound community and cow-human symbiosis as a means of getting the land back to the land – of finding a way out of dominion and into communion with wildlands. His assessment of the roots of institutionalized violence in modern civilization was simple:
Sanctuary for All Life 32:27
Civilizations were born when warriors learned how to enslave the farmers who had learned how to enslave the land.
Adam Huggins 32:36
His solution: learn to stop enslaving the land. And though he may have been a Quaker at heart, his experience with Judeo-Christian congregations during the Sanctuary Movement led him to embrace a surprising approach: the observance of the biblical Sabbath. Here's Jim, speaking to a gathering of Quakers.
Ann Russell 32:58
Have you heard that Cain's punishment for murdering his brother actually consisted of his forgetting the meaning of the Sabbath? That makes sense. Since he was the first tiller of the earth, he probably did value his work so highly, that he forgot, much as we have forgotten. For millennia, Semitic peoples have called wilderness "God's land", distinguishing it from settled areas possessed and remade to fit human plans. The generation that crossed the Jordan was reared in the wilderness in order to assure the integrity of the covenant-formed community's new consciousness. Succeeding generations were given the sabbatical observances as their way to retain this consciousness, and thereby to resist assimilation into societies dedicated to conquering and consuming the creation.
Adam Huggins 34:05
Many of us know that, according to the book of Genesis, the God of Abraham rested on the seventh day of the creation, resulting in the occasional inconvenience of businesses being closed on Sundays. Far fewer are aware that the biblical Sabbath is a much more radical proposition. According to the books of Exodus and Leviticus, every Seventh Day is to be a day of complete rest and sacred assembly. Every seventh year is to be a Sabbath of rest unto the land itself. And every 49th year – that's seven times seven for you math nerds – is to be a jubilee year, when all land should lie fallow, and be returned to its original owners. Who or what exactly qualifies as the original owner has been subject to some debate, to put it mildly. But Jim had his own interpretation. For Jim, sabbatical practice would be the key to getting the land back to the land.
Ann Russell 35:03
Sabbath is a time to quit grabbing at the world to rest and to rejoice in the creations goodness. It opens away toward the peaceable kingdom. That is a non-violent alternative to the apocalyptic hopes of revolutionary zealots. Lacking all Sabbath, a people would also lack a gathering place in time from which to hallow the earth.
Adam Huggins 35:31
To live up to its covenant, the Saguaro Juniper community would need to live sabbatically. Jim saw the practice of nomadic cattle herding as the best way to do this in the Arizona desert. In his own words:
Sanctuary for All Life 35:44
God does a bovine form display to those who live this pastoral way.
Adam Huggins 35:52
In embracing a sabbatical approach to land redemption and restoration, Jim placed himself firmly in opposition to Allan Savory's developing practice of Holistic Range Management: a herding system based on closely managed rotational grazing. Jim felt that the herd was to be joined, not managed. He considered the concept of artificial enclosures, which are necessary in rotational practices, to be antithetical to any hope of harmoniously integrating a herd in wild lands. To Jim, managed herds were abandoned herds.
Sanctuary for All Life 36:29
No amount of cross fencing can fit an abandoned herd into a wild land harmoniously.
Adam Huggins 36:36
in Jim's estimation, Holistic Range Management was chiefly concerned with the growth of grass, while his own practice of pastoral symbiotics was chiefly concerned with the growth of post-civilized humanity. This is because at a fundamental level, Jim believed that human beings can't know enough to manage life on earth. And so, in the final decade of his life, Jim would resist the management paradigm. Land redemption, giving the land back to the land, would begin with the rejection of goal-oriented thinking. It would be a process of evolutionary succession, rather than utopian intervention, characterized by an emphasis on means over ends.
Sanctuary for All Life 37:22
To recognize that management is itself the problem is to understand that Sabbath observance is the restoration of the world.
Adam Huggins 37:43
Jim's steadfast commitment to his principles is nothing if not admirable. But as you may have already guessed, it wasn't always easy to live up to, or even to live with. Here's Pat.
Pat Corbett 37:56
It was difficult sometimes, you know and sometimes in our relationship, it was like the irresistible force met the immovable object, and then we would just have to stop and back up and see if we could find some other compromise to decide this issue. And so if I decided I was not going to do something in a particular way, then we would have to have that discussion. Because otherwise, it could be a little bit like living with a bulldozer.
Adam Huggins 38:20
Perhaps as a result of Pat's positive influence on him, Jim did at times seek compromise in order to create the Saguaro Juniper community.
Nancy Ferguson 38:29
He was very inclusive. You know, when he was thinking up a plan and a project, he really didn't want it to be just him. He wanted it to be, you know, ideas from you know, whoever was participating.
Adam Huggins 38:46
For example, despite Jim's pastoral ethic, allowance was made within Saguaro Juniper for Tom's love of gardening.
Nancy Ferguson 38:53
The thing about Jim was that, yeah, well, he wanted to be pre-agriculture and think that way. But knowing that Tom was into gardens, you know, he's writing up the covenant and saying, "Okay, Tom, how can we fit agriculture into this?"
Adam Huggins 39:12
On the other hand, his strict interpretation of the Saguaro Juniper covenant would exclude one of his closest friends. Here's John Fife.
John Fife 39:21
When he created the covenant community out there, he of course, came to me and said, "Okay, we want you in on this". And I said, "Great, I love that country. I've been out there again and again and again and the Galiuros, and I think it's, it's a special place and I'd love to buy it. 'Cause I want to go hunting out there". And Corbett looks at me and says, "Oh, you can't hunt". I said, "What do you mean I can't hunt, I want to be a part of the community. That's what I've always done out there". And he said, "No, no, that's part of the covenant that the participants have written into the covenant understanding: there will be no hunting of deer or other parts of the ecosystem out there". And I said, "Well, you know, then I can't buy in". And he said, "Well, it's really important. I really want you to be a part of this". I said, "Well, you've excluded those of us who understand hunting as a part of the whole ecosystem that we're a part of". And he said, "Well, I'm sorry". And I said, "Now let me get this right, Jim. You run cattle on covenant land, right?" "Yeah. That's part of the covenant. We're gonna we're gonna work with herding on the covenant land", said, "and all those cows are dying of old age out there, right?" He said, "Well, no, no, no, that's not part of the deal". I said, "So you take cattle in to slaughter, and you won't let me hunt deer out there? Is that the deal?" He kind of grinned. And then one day I see Pat, you know, we're just talking about what's going on with the ranch and what's going on land and everything like this. And she said, "and we had a really bad night. Recently, mountain lion came in and killed some of our goats". And I said, "Oh, and what Jim do about that?" And Pat said, "He hired a hunter to come and kill the lion". I said, "Really?" So I couldn't wait to see Corbett. I said, "Corbett, you won't let me be a part of the covenant out there, and go hunter, but you hire a hunter to kill a lion who's killed your goats? Is that what you're trying to tell me?" And he just grinned.
John Fife 40:14
In the end, John wouldn't be a part of the grand experiment. So why agriculture and not hunting? It's a puzzling contradiction. And it wasn't the first compromise that would be made. Jim's rejection of the very idea of management would run up against the reality of holding grazing leases.
Tom Orum 42:26
And so as soon as you enter into the contract with the state, to lease the land, then it's not totally free and easy. That begins a sequence of events, which leads to more – more management than one would like.
Adam Huggins 42:47
it would prove impossible, even for Jim, to be among the animals 100% of the time. And so water systems and fencing and summer pasture, some kind of management had to be accepted as part of the system.
Tom Orum 43:02
And then the other part of it, of course, is Jim's philosophy, which is that not just to protect land in a preservationist way, but be part of it and interact with it. And he sort of... well let the cows teach you. And so there's a, there's an element of both conservation from the point of view of just not wanting heavy use on the land, but then the other side of: it's wanting to use the land as part of the whole process. So that – that's the tension that always exists between where to graze, how much to graze, and what the limits are in terms of both the land and the people and so forth.
Adam Huggins 43:59
On the final night of our retreat at the Hermitage, I decided that I was going to try and sleep outside on the ground without a blanket, just like Jim. I suppose that I wanted to see what it felt like to live beneath the stars in the desert, and imagine myself as part of a herd of animals without recourse to the comforts of civilization. It was chilly enough in October that I ended up compromising and bringing out my sleeping bag. Ilana was perfectly happy to sleep inside.
Adam Huggins 44:31
The desert night was incredibly still, and the stars luminous as I had hoped. But lacking what I imagined to be the reassuring presence of my fellow herd animals, I felt alone and exposed in a way that I was not accustomed to, despite years of backpacking, often solo. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar stillness of the desert. Or perhaps it was the lack of a tent. But for the first hour or so, sleep eluded me. My mind was busy – cycling through the many challenges and contradictions posed by trying to live as Jim had lived.
Adam Huggins 45:12
At first, I thought I might be imagining the snorts and stomping emanating from the open wash. But by the time the heavy footfalls were indenting the dry earth around my head, I realized that I was laying in the midst of a stampede of totally unfamiliar, unidentifiable, wild mammals. Frozen in terror, I curled up inside my sleeping bag and prayed that I wouldn't be detected. As soon as the group had passed, I unclenched unzipped and made a beeline towards the Hermitage and the warm bed waiting within. Somehow, Ilana was unsurprised to see me returning so soon.
Adam Huggins 46:00
It was only the next day that I realized that I'd been lying directly in the path of a pack of wild New World pigs, known as Peccaries, or Javalinas. I had been so caught up in retracing Jim steps, I'd forgotten to consider that herds can come in diverse forms.
Adam Huggins 46:35
Today, the Saguaro Juniper faithful continue to manage a small herd of cattle, fulfilling the covenant and protecting 1000s of acres of land in the San Pedro River watershed.
Pat Corbett 46:46
We're part of a wildlife corridor that stretches all the way down and across the river. We all think that's pretty important and want to try and keep it going.
Adam Huggins 46:55
Pat Corbett continues to take an active role out on the range, on horseback with the herd.
Pat Corbett 47:01
Well, when the cattle are on range, I kind of act as the range rider, and try and keep track of the cattle, and the water, and whether the fences is wrapped, and then I call on somebody else who's younger and healthier than me to come repair whatever it is that needs to be fixed. Like I say, getting on the horse is kind of hard. But once I get on the horse, I can just sit there, and getting off is a little bit difficult.
Adam Huggins 47:23
Saguaro Juniper maintains a solid base of community support. On occasion, even Ann Russell is able to make the trip out from California to help out.
Ann Russell 47:32
Yeah, I got to do that last April, Pat lent me her chaps. And it's just very quiet. We were walking. I was on a horse called Lumpy, short for Lumpen Proletariat.
Adam Huggins 47:49
It's like one big family, at home on the range.
Pat Corbett 47:53
The fact that they're cows and not people, at a certain point it's not very relevant. You know, we're all here together.
Adam Huggins 47:59
Of course, it's a nuanced relationship.
Pat Corbett 48:02
You know, I eat our beef. So obviously, you know, we slaughter livestock. But we have this great commitment to making sure that they lead a good healthy, in bovine terms, happy life, contented life. And in the process of doing this, we don't damage the land where they're being kept.
Adam Huggins 48:23
The Saguaro Juniper approach to conservation – based on the conviction that humans can be naturalized into the wildland community – is still uncommon. but is slowly gaining traction in the environmental community.
Nancy Ferguson 48:36
Thinking and acting as if human beings can actually be a positive part of wildlands is a pretty radical notion. And it's almost more radical to conservationists than it is to farmers and ranchers. And that's the notion that's really dear to me: that if if I love Saguaros, I don't have to say "people should never go near Saguaros, or the Sonoran Desert as a whole" – that there can be a place that we can be part of.
Adam Huggins 49:09
It's largely a labor of love. The beef and other products from the cows is enough to maintain the operation, but not enough to provide stable employment for herders. This means that, while a number of young people have been attracted to Saguaro Juniper, and its sister organization, the Cascabel Conservation Association, it's proven difficult to provide them lasting opportunities to be a part of the herd.
Pat Corbett 49:33
Well, there are a lot of young folks, I'm sure, who would really like to. The problem is, you know, this kind of operation doesn't really bring in enough money to, you know, keep a lot of people employed. We really struggle to pay one person, in fact, and we don't get all of that from the cattle operation. And so it's – it's tended to work out that the people who can be involved in this are folks who are retired and still physically active and have an income that allows them to live here
Adam Huggins 50:02
In this way, Saguaro Juniper is a lot like many small, community based conservation organizations in aging communities. It's also a bit like the Saguaros in Tom and Nancy's study. Saguaro Juniper will only thrive in the long run if it can seed and support the next generation. In ecology, "recruitment" is just a fancy word for this process of welcoming new members into a community, whether they're cactus sprouts or young herders.
Adam Huggins 50:30
Right now, Saguaro Juniper is welcoming people who want to pursue a sabbatical life in the desert – carrying on and adapting the work that Jim, Pat, Nancy, Tom, and others began several decades ago. They've just published an expanded second edition of Sanctuary For All Life, and they've been reviving monthly sabbatical gatherings. They've even started a Goatwalking group. From my most recent conversations with community members, they're entering an exciting, uncertain period – a time of rediscovery, reflection, and hopefully, of renewal.
Adam Huggins 51:18
So is it possible to create a Sanctuary for All Life in this place, at this time? for Tom and Nancy, even after all of these years, there are times when Jim's ideals feel out of reach.
Tom Orum 51:33
To me, it's a bar that I can't achieve. But on the other hand, it's an ideal that I really respect, and look to do what one can, and also enable others who might be interested to try.
Adam Huggins 51:50
When I reflect on Jim's writing, he never fixated on the goal – just the process, just the journey. And that journey, by definition, is going to look a little bit different for everyone.
Nancy Ferguson 52:04
It occurred to me as we were sitting, talking, that the cows and the Saguaros both do the same thing for me. They're both ways that encouraged me to get out and be part of the system myself. The fact that we're out every spring, counting the Saguaros, means that, you know I'm a part of that system and seeing things and understanding that I wouldn't otherwise – and it's true with the cows that keeps me grounded, and in this place.
Adam Huggins 52:44
I finished reading Pat's dog-eared copy of Sanctuary for All Life on the last morning of our retreat, shortly before Susan picked us up. For a few moments, I lay still in the sun, grateful for the opportunity to sojourn on this redeemed land. Speaking frankly, I don't think that the pastoral life is for me. The only milk I can stomach is nut milk, and too much idleness drives me to distraction. But I do hunger for that stillness that among all of the demands of civilized life, can be so elusive. I worry that all of my frantic activity is just kicking up more dust from the parched earth. And I'm terrified of the possibility that, in working so hard to restore the earth, I've sacrificed the daily presence that might allow me to hallow it.
Adam Huggins 53:42
I think that I return again and again to Jim's life and his writing, not because it agrees with me, but because it challenges every part of the person that I've become. It is like walking into the desert. Not sure if you're going to come out again, searching for a forgotten spring.
Sanctuary for All Life 54:06
And on a desert mountain, amidst the harsh of soaring granite, I've opened a forgotten spring. The few who remembered thought it had long ago gone dry, but I found the hidden place dug down until the stream ran clear and cold in the summer sun. So what are epitaphs to me? Still in my 20s I could already write as good a remembrance as any I could imagine for myself at 90: "He kept a lamb or two from freezing. He found and opened a forgotten spring".
Adam Huggins 54:55
Jim died in 2001, leaving both the manuscript and the project – of creating a Sanctuary for All Life – unfinished. In the next and final episode of this series, we're going to leave Jim behind, picking up the threads that extend from his life to the present day crisis in the Borderlands. and to those continuing the work of Sanctuary in its many forms. That's next time on the forth and final part of Goatwalker.
Adam Huggins 55:33
Goatwalker is produced by myself, Adam Huggins, and Mendel Skulski for Future Ecologies. Ilana Fonariov is the Associate Producer for this series. For photos, citations, and more information about the people and events described in this episode, please visit futureecologies.net
Adam Huggins 55:52
Okay, I have some exciting news for those of you who've been asking about Jim's books. In a coincidence so well timed you'd think we'd planned it, as of last month. Sanctuary for All Life has been republished by Cascabel books, with a new afterword by 13 folks who continue to honor the covenant and manage the Hermitage. It's a fascinating read, and it's available for a reasonable price on Amazon. You don't have to borrow Pat's copy or make a special order from a used bookstore in Germany like I did. In equally exciting news, thanks to the efforts of a number of dedicated folks, Goatwalking is going to be republished in September of this year via Kindle Direct Publishing. If you'd like to know when it's ready, you can send your name and email address to goatwalking2021@gmail.com
Adam Huggins 56:42
In this episode, you heard Ann Russell, Tom Oram, Nancy Ferguson, John Fife, Pat Corbett, Jim Corbett, and Miriam Davidson. Narration was by Philip Buller. Music was by Satorian, Hidden Sky, and Sunfish Moon Light. The ever-evolving Goatwalker theme is by Ryder Thomas White and Sunfish Moon Light. Special thanks to Teresa Madison, Susan Tollefson, John Fife, Pat Corbett, Nancy Ferguson, Tom Orum, Gary Paul Nanhan Gita Bodner, Amanda Howard and the University of Arizona, Sadie Couture, Phil Buller, Danny Elmes, and Susan L. Newman.
Adam Huggins 57:28
Future Ecologies is an independent production, supported by our patrons. To join them, go to patreon.com/futureecologies.
Adam Huggins 57:37
This series was recorded on the territory of the Tohono O’odham, and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territory of the Penelakut, Hwlitsum, Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples.