Judith D. Schwartz - The Reindeer Chronicles: And Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth

Praise for The Reindeer Chronicles

Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Judith Schwartzs world tour of environmental solutions shows how nature itself can heal the wounds we have inflicted on our planet. Compelling, fascinating, sometimes unexpectedly moving, this vitally important book is, above all, a springboard for hope and transformation.

ISABELLA TREE , author of Wilding

In The Reindeer Chronicles , Judith Schwartz proves, once again, that she is one of ecologys most indispensable writers. Like her last two books, Cows Save the Planet and Water in Plain Sight , her new work is an insightful, globe-trotting exploration of promising techniques for restoring our soil, water, agricultural systems, and wildlife. The Reindeer Chronicles is at once visionary and pragmaticclear-eyed about the immense planetary challenges we face, yet unfailingly hopeful about our ability to forge a new relationship with nature. This book shows us what Aldo Leopolds land ethic looks like in the twenty-first century.

BEN GOLDFARB , PEN America Literary Award-winning author of Eager

This book shows us again and again, across the globe, the abundant future that is possible if we work with nature. Stunning stories of re-greening landscapes, restoring carbon and water cycles, and repairing weather. It is a balm and a guide, a wellspring of grounded hope.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON , PhD, founder of Urban Ocean Lab and of Ocean Collectiv

Judith Schwartz unlocks yet one more door in our minds about whats possible when we work with natures cycles rather than try to push her around. Through this book and her prior ones, you can practically see, taste, and smell a healing earth that includes humans as stewards, not ravaging locusts. If you want practical hope, this is it. If you want a place to dig in and make change, regeneration is the key. These are stories of people who work both intimately and at scaleand with loveto restore life to the land we all walk on, our beautiful home, the earth.

VICKI ROBIN , coauthor of Your Money or Your Life and author of Blessing the Hands that Feed Us

A tale of people restoring nature and their communities. These deeply optimistic dispatches from around the world show us that the key to restoring land is how we see itthe change begins in us.

DAVID R. MONTGOMERY , author of Growing a Revolution

As the regenerative agriculture movement grows worldwide, Judith Schwartz has emerged as a leading tracker and interpreter of its progress, challenges, and wins. The value of Schwartzs multifaceted work and engaging first-person style is that a broader and deeper canvas emerges.

Schwartzs descriptions and analyses are not rosy-eyed, but instead comprise a balanced, warts-and-all approach mixed with extraordinary tales of transformation of vast and small ecosystems, landscapes and farms, societies and communities; of food systems; and of human physical and mental health. As she says, earth repair is a participatory sport, and restoration can begin anywhere.

This is an excellent read for expert and newcomer alike, and an important contribution to a growing canon now offering some of the very best solutions to the onrushing Anthropocene crisis.

CHARLES MASSY , author of Call of the Reed Warbler

These are times that call for us to reimagine everything. That imaginative capacity depends on the stories, the possibilities, the experiences we have in our memory and our ability to reassemble them in new and unique ways. If you want to be part of that reimagining, you need the beautiful, patient, humbling stories in these pages. Their implications are staggering, and also suggest that sometimes we save the world by doing less rather than more. Do your imagination, your activism, your sense of whats possible a favor, and swim in this book.

ROB HOPKINS , author of From What Is to What If

Also by Judith D. Schwartz

Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World

Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth

The Reindeer Chronicles

And Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth

JUDITH D. SCHWARTZ

Chelsea Green Publishing

White River Junction, Vermont

London, UK

Copyright 2020 by Judith D. Schwartz.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover image of reindeer migrating through the Kildal Valley (Finnmark, N.Norway) to summer pastures taken by Bryan and Cherry Alexander.

Project Manager: Sarah Kovach

Developmental Editor: Brianne Goodspeed

Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad

Proofreader: Natalie Jones

Indexer: Shana Milkie

Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Page Composition: Abrah Griggs

Printed in Canada.

First printing July 2020.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 120 21 22 23 24

Our Commitment to Green Publishing

Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because it was printed on paper that contains recycled fiber, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. The Reindeer Chronicles was printed on paper supplied by Marquis that is made of recycled materials and other controlled sources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schwartz, Judith D., author.

Title: The reindeer chronicles : and other inspiring stories of working with nature to heal the earth / Judith D. Schwartz.

Description: White River Junction, VT : Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020019740 (print) | LCCN 2020019741 (ebook) | ISBN 9781603588652 (paperback) | ISBN 9781603588669 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Restoration ecology. | Reclamation of land.

Classification: LCC QH541.15.R45 S393 2020 (print) | LCC QH541.15.R45 (ebook) | DDC 333.73/153dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019740

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019741

Chelsea Green Publishing

85 North Main Street, Suite 120

White River Junction, VT 05001

(802) 295-6300

Somerset House

London, UK

www.chelseagreen.com

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Alvin D. Schwartz, MD (19322020), who devoted his life to healing.

Contents

Its time to rebuild what has been lost.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, 20212030

The biologist and pioneer of ecological design John Todd once wrote, That which has been damaged can be healed. I remember when this notion became personal for me. It was an evening in early June, our first dinner on the deck. I looked down over the meadow, across overlapping layers of green: the flared crowns of trees, grasses flecked white with wild strawberry, and the garden, where stalks of garlic rose from their mulchy beds. Green all the way to the blackberry thicket at the bottom of the hill: a prickly moat guarding the forest. From the stillness I heard our state bird, the hermit thrush. Its fluted call, heard only this time of year, always evokes for me the possibility of earthly perfectionjoy captured in sound.

Southern Vermont puts on a good show in late spring. Still, thanks to what I understood from writing about soil and land health, I knew our small acreage could be more lush and productive. Our old apple treeslike most nineteenth-century Vermonters, the farmers who once lived here grew apples for ciderare being crowded out by brush. The hillside slope is overgrown. And after migrating tentatively year after year, the black raspberry vines have largely disappeared, as have the thimbleberries (the thimble-shaped red berries sit on your tongue and dissolve into pith).