"For she was a shepherdess..."

"I lost the three shepherds in one month" (Zecharia 11:8); and thus, in one month, Aaron, Miriam, and Moses died.
- Otzar Midrashim, Aharon, Midrash on the Death of Aharon 3

Goatwalking Few groups could have been better prepared, bonded together and predisposed than the Cabreros Andantes to help the refugees get through. Errantry shifted from goat herding to refugee aid.
Adam Huggins I really want to stop and emphasize this point for a moment. In my own reading of history, people who cultivate intimate relationships with the more-than-human world often become leaders, and resources in times of disaster, of deprivation, and of demagoguery. In this respect, I would argue that you could draw a straight line from St. Francis of Assisi to Henry David Thoreau, and right on to Jim Corbett. Few people would have made the decision that Jim and John made, and fewer still would have actually been able to pull it off. Jim's years of roaming in the desert with his goats turned out to be a singular contribution.
Goat Walker Part 2, Future Ecologies Podcast

Hurtling through the darkness, a mile north of Hungary’s border with Serbia, Hans Breuer duelled with his satellite navigation system. In pristine German, the satnav insisted he head west, along the most direct route to his home in Austria. But Breuer had other ideas, swerving down a dirt track that the GPS didn’t recognise.
Amid gentle chides from the satnav, the 61-year-old switched off his headlights, so that no one would see where he’d gone. Then he bumped and veered through unmarked farm trails and shepherd paths that led eventually westwards, but away from the main roads. After 20 minutes, he stopped in a field, and turned to a blanket on the backseat. “OK,” said Breuer to the blanket. “You can come out now.” From under the fabric, three heads emerged – a Syrian Kurd, Galbari al-Hussein, and her two children, Hussein and Shahed.
Suddenly exuberant, Breuer beamed with pleasure. “Friends of my mother escaped the Nazis by pretending to be members of the SS. Hearing this story all my life is what has prepared me for this situation.”
Already well known in Austria, Breuer came to international attention recently when he uploaded a video of himself singing Yiddish folk songs, in chorus with a car load of Syrian-Palestinians. On this night, Breuer tries something similar. To cheer everyone up, he sings a recent composition – another Yiddish tune set to lyrics about the plight of refugees.
“All my shoes got torn to pieces at the Hungaaaaaarian border,” sings Breuer, to the tune of a Jewish wedding song. “Macedonians shot at us with tear-gas to make oooooorder. They forced us to give fingerprints – and took away our phoooones. We have to sleep just on the ground – can feel it in my bo-ooones.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/20/austrian-shepherd-drives-refugees-across-border-hans-breuer

"Goatwalking is one of the few ways that a group of people who have been tamed to serve technocratic civilization can cease (shabbat) for a time to live by making war on life... It happens to be the easiest way I know to feed myself by fitting into an ecological niche, rather than a social hierarchy. It also happens to be the only way I've discovered to share and bequeath the outlook and practice of symbiotic covenanting with a technocratic society."

"And that was part of his philosophy is we're not separate. We're part of the herd, we're part of the desert. We can be part of the desert in a low impact way. We had a tremendous amount of respect for him. We thought he knew everything.
- Ann Russell (young participant on one of Jim's goat-herding 'summer camps').
"Sabbatical times weave Sinai stillness into history, as the warp holding time's weft. The sabbath day is a time to quit grabbing at the world, to rest, and to rejoice in the Creation's goodness. During the sabbatical year all are to cease making their living agriculturally, supporting themselves instead from the land's spontaneous, uncultivated growth. Debts are to be cancelled and slaves are to be freed..... Lacking a Sabbath, a people would also lack a gathering place in time from which to hallow the earth.... Sabbatical communion also opens a way to bridge divisions between peoples and classes and to transcend humankind's alienation from land and livelihood."

Going out; Doing nothing; Getting nowhere; Losing hold.

It asks us to put aside our bottomless need for productivity and entertainment, and to try – even for just a short time – to be at home in wildlands. You could do this any number of ways. And for Jim, goatwalking was his portal. It was a way to become feral for a time in a society that all but makes this impossible.