This is the “full” time of year with lots of tasks, mostly focused on the ranching version of the three R’s: Weeding, watering, and worrying.  When the work starts to feel overwhelming, that’s the time when I most need to sit down with the land and herd — to let the answers arise out of our life together. It is hard to remember this! I heard once that the hardest thing to teach people to do if they should get lost in the wilderness is to stop and stay still and wait for someone to find you. Our fear-brain goads us to keep moving, which often just gets us more lost and farther away from help.

I opened up Sanctuary for All Life the other day for inspiration and this is my companion thought for the month.

The problem is rooted in the managerial delusion that the land belongs to us either inclusively, as a commons, or exclusively, as property, to use, degrade, or destroy as we like. The land is actually a living community to which we belong. –Jim Corbett