Goatwalking: a Guide to Wildland Living

by Jim Corbett

The author, who has spent much of his life tending goats in Arizona, recounts how he became one of the founders of the Sanctuary movement, helping political refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Social Justice, Religion, Nature, Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 18, 1991

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James A. "Jim" Corbett (born Casper, Wyoming, October 8, 1933 - died near Benson, Arizona, August 2, 2001) was an American rancher, writer, Quaker, philosopher, and human rights activist and a co-founder of the Sanctuary movement.

The son of a teacher and a substitute teacher, Corbett was descended from European-American settlers and Blackfoot Indians, and spent part of his childhood living on an Indian reservation. He graduated from Colgate University and got his master's degree in philosophy from Harvard. He took up ranching in Wyoming and Arizona and continued to herd goats and cows until his death and did research into beekeeping and goat husbandry. He also was librarian and philosophy instructor at Cochise College in Arizona.

In the early 1960s he converted to Quakerism and became an opponent of the Vietnam War. In 1981, while living in Arizona, he became aware of refugees fleeing from civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala who were crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona and seeking political asylum. At the time, very few of these refugees were receiving protection, as the U.S. government was funding the governments of the countries from which the refugees were fleeing, and immigration judges were instructed by the State Department to deny most asylum petitions. Together with other human rights activists, Corbett started a small movement in Arizona to assist these people coming across the border, by providing assistance, transportation, and shelter. Under the auspices of churches and Quaker meetings, and citing the religious precedent of protecting people feeling persecution, as well as the Geneva conventions barring countries from deporting refugees back to countries in the middle of civil wars (non-refoulement), the activists found support for their work in congregations in Arizona and Chicago, Illinois, as well as south Texas and eventually other communities in many states, including California, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and others. This movement, which became known as the Sanctuary movement eventually involved over 500 congregations, and helped hundreds if not thousands of refugees find freedom in the U.S. The Sanctuary movement was one of the most famous examples of civil initiative in the 1980s. Corbett and nine others around Tucson, Arizona were arrested for their work, as it violated U.S. immigration laws, although he was eventually acquitted. He continued to assist refugees and to write on various topics of social justice.

Corbett was among the most intellectual of the movement's proponents, and he wrote and published widely on the topic.

Reviews

[Ryan Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned about Jim Corbett from the podcast "Future Ecologies," which is currently putting out an incredible series about his thought and life. I was especially drawn to the podcast's description of his mystical, heterodox take on Christianity, which gave him a moral framework that called upon him to smuggle Central American refugees into the US during the 1980s whom had been denied refugee status by the Reagan administration. I had to learn more about him, so I picked this book up. His interpretation of Christianity dismisses the common form of the religion as a cynical, self-interested negotiation: be good and get paradise in return. Instead, his vision of Christianity is based on the unity of all creation and the act of "communion," or living in total reliance on/harmony with nature, unmediated by any of the comforts of the modern world. He suggests herding with goats through the desert as the most accessible form of communion that allows one to experience the immensity, presence, and unity of God's creation. The details he gives on how to survive with goats in the desert were the parts of the book I found the most interesting. Experiences like goatwalking are necessary to renew the covenant between humans and God and continually remind humans of the importance of having a land ethic given our condition of being alienated from the planet by industrialization.

I think I read this book looking for a personal spiritual breakthrough. I read much of it by lantern light in a tent in Wisconsin with my 2 year old son asleep next to me. The tent was about 20 feet away from my car, which was filled with all of the comforts of home: children's books, a cooler, a box of cereal, a coffee maker, etc. I think Jim Corbett would see my attempt at communion as a failure because of my constant ability to fall back on the comforts of civilization. In turn, I can't fully embrace Jim Corbett's vision because of how fundamentally inaccessible his communion is to 99% of humanity. Does that mean we are unable to access the correct ecological consciousness and moral framework necessary to save humanity from ecological collapse? I really hope not.

[rachel burgos · Rating 5 out of 5]

as a goatwalker i'll tell you this man knows goatwalking. theologically and from firsthand experience. LOVED IT LOVE IT everyone should read it

[John Wilmerding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entirely excellent, and one of the best books I have ever read.

To disambiguate from others with the same name, here's a link to the WikiPedia article on the author:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A...

'Goatwalking' is so named because it goes into some detail on the author's unusual experience of living and traveling with herds of goats for days at a time, drinking only their milk.

A Quaker, Corbett is popularly credited with having founded the Sanctuary Movement in the USA. Legend has it that he traveled up and down the length of Mexico helping to shepherd and guide refugees from repressive regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries, interceding to save their lives and gain them tenuous asylum in safe havens, including churches, throughout the USA.

As of 2017, the Sanctuary Movement has grown to the point where entire cities have declared themselves sanctuaries, and ordered their police not to cooperate with the Federal immigration authorities. It is a major thorn-in-the-side of the repressive Trump regime, whose officials are attempting to coerce various jurisdictions' collusion by denying federal aid to them.

Here is an extremely powerful excerpt (not in 'Goatwalking') from a Quaker pamphlet (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #270, 'The Sanctuary Church') written by Corbett :

"We cannot serve justice if we become hypnotized by the state's use of violence, as though its force were the ultimate power. When we focus on organized coercion as if it were the dominant reality, our world shatters into means and uses, all that is truly worthwhile being projected as goals out beyond the present time in which we actually live.

"One consequence to this strictly-political approach is that, in common with its extension as warfare, it can make no sense of universal human rights.

(There is an irrational assumption that) the present must be sacrificed, and violence must be done for the future's sake.

"The alternative is social involvement generated by presence-centered communion. Fulfilling this present time in which we live -- as the co-creative task for which our unrepeatable place here and now empowers us -- is quite different from assaulting our present as though it were a barrier separating us from our creative potential and requiring that we engineer the means to break through to a just and meaningful future.

"... we hear ourselves called to become a people that hallows the Earth, a people that covenants to do justice and to love kindness, that the Kingdom may come -- on Earth, in our lives, and during our days.

"... the term 'sanctuary' refers to protective community with (the vulnerable); with people whose basic human rights are being violated by government officials. As a declared practice, it incorporates prophetic witness into protective community; that is, in addition to protecting the violated from the state, the public practice of sanctuary holds the state accountable for its violations of human rights."

-- James Corbett (1933-2001) -- Quaker Author, New Mexico Rancher, and founder of the Sanctuary Movement, who was honored within his lifetime by the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (NCPCR '99) as an 'Elder Quaker Peacemaker'.

[Abby]

I love the way life brings me books. This one is certainly very bound up in the living that surrounds the reading, as my reading led me to a person who led to more reading that led to another person, leading to a Tucson book shop to ask for an out-of-print book called Goatwalking, and they magically had a copy.

So if you're wondering, this book does indeed contain a great deal of practical information about goat husbandry. It also contains practical information about how to smuggle Central American refugees across borders, in addition to large swaths of citation-heavy political theory, stories from Corbett’s personal history, a literary-critical reading of Don Quixote, and much Quaker(ish) theology(?). Yes, it is a weird, weird book, and the strangest thing about it is how much sense it makes. To talk about ecology and livestock and a person's ethical response to state violence and the way people can live and work together (and who we mean by "people" and what we mean by "together") all in the same breath--it just makes so much sense. Jim Corbett was only a small part of the Sanctuary Movement, but he was the person who did much of its articulation for the outside world. All things considered, he did an amazing job.

Between this and Milta Ortiz's Sanctuary and Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, I've been taking a little trip to Tucson in the '80s lately. There I encountered the roots of all the issues that dominate my experience today, and these people saw them coming. Corbett says over and over that the Sanctuary Movement is a response to injustice and is political in nature, but is not at its core concerned with politics at all. It's about people living and working together, discovering practical ways to create the conditions for that to happen. That's it, really. Its loyalty is only to life. Loyalty to life in a violent civilization sometimes requires drastic measures. Here is one of the people who took them.

[Uintah Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jim Corbett was an eccentric and exceptional man. I have friends who knew him at least a little. By reason of fearless faith, he actually lived out much of what he believed, and he didn't believe in anything because it was easy. He created community, and that was one of his areas of grounding, but he was simultaneously lost in his own head. His single-minded vision took him much further in his own direction that a broader, open-minded approach might have, but his total dependence on his own narrow (if deep and internally consistent) thought left him bewilderingly ignorant of any view beyond his own. This book is a unidirectional labrynth down into one man's mind, a mind that was trained and harmonious with academic philosophical reasoning, but responsive only to its own directives. I had no desire to get lost in his labrynth. I would have loved to have known him, and I hope one day to visit his community, but after the first couple of chapters I only skimmed the very surface of his book.

[Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Currently reading it....not as fast a pace or easy a read as Kinship with all life, and this guy definitely has a lot of points to make. I have to reread some of his paragraphs to really get it.....I should probably finish it before I review it....Okay..it's August...I never finished it...too intellectualized...to mmany sentences to re-read to decipher...maybe a nother time....

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been on my list for quite some time, and I'm so glad to say I can move it to the "have read" category.

The content is an interesting journey from goats and errantry, to faith discussion, to environmental and social concerns and the history of the sanctuary movement. Some parts were more readable than others. Learning the history of the sanctuary movement in Tucson (while I happened to be visiting Tucson) was really interesting, especially as I read about people I had met and heard about.

Corbett would go on my list of authors/people I wish I could have dinner with.

[Chamrev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this book to read on a 3 month sabbatical at an ecumenical institute--Tantur--situated on a hillside outside of Bethlehem and a ten minute drive to Jerusalem. I remember the book as contributing to my walks and struggles in that land for the 3 months. But I no longer have a copy and wish I had to review. This was in 1995. I do remember it was meaningful to me on a very different walk in my life.

[A.E. Reiff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I owe a debt of kindness to all living beings. Up in the night to take the flood, I had been reading Goatwalking anyway, but after, on going to bed, concluded what never before occurred, that I desire psychoanalysis to put some understanding on all the mythologies I make of the events of my life. I can think of 50 things I am guilty of, most of which I review practically daily, but never speak, hence do not know their power over me, but almost none of the other sort.

Corbett says in Free and Easy Wandering that women are superior to men in identifying with the herd. This is a positive completely and is what starts this thought off in the building of relationships for survival. What really gets me On Killing and Eating Your Friends is Corbett's tale of the end of his dog Puck, a sheep/cow dog of 15 years service who became arthritic so much...well you know what happens if you have seen it. I have seen it, notably twice, with our two old weathered wise black chows, Jogger and Blessing. We got Blessing to keep Jogger company in his age. He had been a watchdog for gangs in our neighborhood, tied with a chain, and bred several times. I met his owner once over this saga because Jogger kept escaping and coming to us, three separate times, until finally events conspired with our help to keep him. The point is not how he eventually died, a long tale, but how his lifelong devotion to his mistress transformed her life. But she, to be fair, has spent many days and nights with the lonely and afflicted comforting them in death, singing, hand holding. Woman know the heart, Corbett says.

The night before he went Jogger barked on his heated cushioned bed on the porch for hours, it was March, the same bark he greeted her with. Several hours before he left she was seated beside him with her hands on his heart, singing. And she was still there when he died.

I had my chance with Blessing, who choose to be with us from the first time we saw her litter at 8 weeks. Over her 14 years I was not always the friend I was at the end. She got some kind of infection of the head, swelling, from a mockingbird peck we think, and had three surgeries with MRIs to no avail over two years. She began to get seizures from this. I nursed her through 40 of these. She would begin to tremble and quake and I would put my hands on her and tell her I loved her and that it would pass and she would be OK. I got to know these really well. She would come up to me from her rug before them sometimes, feeling the electrical discharge and we would wait it out together. Eventually she couldn't walk without slipping on the polished concrete floor because her nails had gotten so long just from not walking. I put rugs everywhere inside then. She was blind completely in one eye and partly in another so I put night lights up for night vision. When she had to go out she would make a little woof and I would guide her to the door and wait till she would come back in at night. She spent the last night out in a favorite place on the walk, it was a warm March night. I was out before 6 and she smiled at me, but I didn't do what my wife had and sit with her. Then she was gone.

Corbett tells of Puck's last except they were in the wild. He shot him at the base of the skull, "pressed my hand against his body and waited for the spasms and muscular twitching to pass," (46) so he got to know his last moment. I don't think his or my efforts were enough. I think my wife's were. I long to find and give this compassion and comfort for all the living.

[Peggy]

This book always looked intriguing to me, but I simply wasn't getting anywhere with it despite owning it for a number of years. I kept coming back to it, but also kept putting it aside without making much progress. I still think I'd like to know more about it, maybe read it another time.... but bottom line, I gifted my copy to a younger friend who seems to have chosen what seemed to be a similar life to the one depicted. Not that this young man takes goats along on his treks, but his bouts in the Utah and Colorado wilderness as an archeologist strike me as similar roams. I hope he will give me some feedback if he reads it himself.

[Jojo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, but it's not what you'd expect from the title or even from the first few chapters. It starts out with very practical instructions on how to escape society via nomadic existence then turns to the author's Quaker experience with social justice activism and with the Sanctuary movement.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a gem and a chronicle of one incredible human being's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Reading this book helped me down the path of my own spiritual journey. It's somewhat of a tutorial on loving kindness, humanitarianism, meditation, and personal conviction. Powerful and special.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

From goat walking to finding a higher power to putting faith into action in the Sanctuary movement -- three interwoven aspects of the author's life. Dense and intense, I found many sections required a re-read. Not for the fainthearted.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this back 15 years ago. Just adding to my list. A funky book by a goat herder who helped central american refugees crossing the sonoran desert in the 80s.