175. Doing the Impossible: Judith Schwartz on transcending our impasses to heal the earth & each other

And then , a few years ago , in an extraordinary global tour of earth repair , came The Reindeer Chronicles: And other inspiring stories of working with nature to heal the earth .

That award-winning book featured stories from Norway , Spain , Hawai'i , New Mexico , the Middle East and Australia - Kachana Station , in fact , the 200,000-acre station in the East Kimberley that's the subject of the second most listened to episode on this podcast .

Among those stories there's something in particular about the one from New Mexico that stands to assist all the others and what's to come . It's a story that's shaped the next phase of Judy's life in some ways, and mine for that matter, and is arguably the leading edge of what we need most right now .

I say that because , given the stories of regeneration in every sphere are everywhere now, we can say we do broadly know what to do, and who can help the rest of us join in . So what's stopping us ? A nd how can we get beyond entrenched beliefs and patterns that are holding us back ?

Some of what Judy's written up and has gone on with personally since is almost too amazing to be true . Indeed , as we've heard on this podcast recently from people like Tim Hollo , Amanda Cahill and Katherine Trebeck, w e do know of processes , too , that answer those crucial questions .

And one consistent thread in these processes is how contemplating the apparently impossible can change everything . Interestingly , it's also consistent with processes that elite athletes are increasingly engaging in . Judy calls it the approach of thinking, 'w ouldn't it be cool if ? ' .

A nd hearing how Judy's own path of deep healing has converged with these bigger stories of regeneration , even how she's become a black belt in karate in her 60s, well , that does sound cool .

Before we hear from Judy , though , thanks very much to two more brilliant women - Lucci , who I've known since playing music in the 90s , and Jo Donaldson , who I've been glad to meet in her role for our MP Kate Chaney's office . Thanks very much to you both for becoming subscribers of the podcast .

It's what makes this ad-free , listener-supported podcast possible , so if you're also finding value in this , please consider joining Lucci and Jo and this great community of supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute .

Yes , you can enjoy a variety of benefits , like some behind-the-scenes footage from me , invitations to events , general updates and , of course , you'll continue to receive the podcast directly . Just head to the website via the show notes . RegenNarration . com forward slash support and thanks again . Okay , let's join Judy . Late in the evening in Vermont .

We had been talking off-air about the many climate-related disasters unfolding globally right now , which prompted me to ask her if she feels the pinch of that at times .

And one thing that she said you know she wasn't saying this in advice to me or anything but she said that how she gets by is when things feel overwhelming , you make things , you make your world very small , and there is wisdom to that . I mean that can be a cop-out , that can be an escape , but it can also be a meaningful coping mechanism .

So I find that , whereas not that long ago everything for me was kind of global and I'd have my little spot right here at my desk and I'd be engaging globally , now I see that I'm doing some of that global engagement , but it's going back and forth to something very , very local and , in fact , I didn't expect this to happen .

But I'm becoming more of an activist locally and exploring ways of doing that effectively that align with my sense of who I am and what I'm capable of , and that's been really interesting .

And partly because when people would talk to me they would say what can I do about our global predicament ? You know , I'm concerned about climate change , I'm concerned about , you know , biodiversity loss . But what do I do ? And what I would always say is start where you are . And that sounds really , really simple , but it actually has many layers .

So start where you are , because one you can be effective , but also because when you start where you are , you start to notice things . And one thing that I feel that has been missing from our you know I'll talk about the global climate movement is observation of what is happening on the land , Just where we are .

You know we've got our heads , you know , on the keeling curve , on statistics , on numbers and models and what the latest report is . But climate , biodiversity are every . You know all of this collective of different nouns that reflect our state , the state of our Earth . All of us are engaged in that and it's very real and it's very in the moment .

And so when I say start where you are , it's also starting that process of reengaging and asking questions and making observations and grief and joy I mean the joy when you observe life you know , like whether it's you know whether it's . You see a bobcat . You know where I am . You see a fox . You see a bear .

You can laugh at the bear that has gotten into your rotten apples and has sat down in them and is walking away with a bottom full of snow and apples . I mean that's funny .

So one thing in terms of starting where you are , what has been meaningful for me , you know , separate from the global work , the reporting , the you know conferences , is focusing on native pollinators , you know , at risk of pollinators that evolved in this particular landscape and supporting them by ensuring that the native plants that they co evolved with are here .

And it sounds kind of silly , but when I go down into the garden and I see that there's a funny looking pink moth , Okay I say what the heck is that ? It's got a little bit of yellow on it . And then I realize that it's an evening primrose moth . And guess what it's on the evening primrose plant , you know , I mean , that's so obvious .

But to see it , to observe it and to see that this you know , funny looking thing is still there , and I just realized that the way that the light hits that plant , it's a yellow flower but somehow it has a little tinge of pink . So that outrageously pink and yellow moth is in exactly the right place .

You know we want to highlight what they're doing because we're fascinated , and you know we're happy to recede into the background , right ? But yeah , what's happened recently , and this is , it's kind of anyway , what we have here in Vermont , thank you , I hate to say it , but it's a little bit the solar wars .

So , solar power , yes , we all know that that's really important for shifting our energy usage and , okay , so we know that we have solar on our property .

However , what's happened is that the incentives are such that companies , big companies that have no connection to our landscape , are coming in and they see that they can ride on the subsidies and the incentives and they're coming in . And a couple of phrases that have come to mind is land grabs because we have land in Vermont and green colonialism .

I think we have to , as much as we want to have renewable energy . We really need to be mindful of this , and one thing that is very present in my mind is that I'm deeply concerned that , at least here in the US I can't speak for other places . Climate change has been framed as a matter of energy , and that's a part of it .

But what I fear is that that has foreclosed our imagination for all the ways that functioning ecosystems , that healthy landscapes , actually do the work of climate regulation . So we've got a situation here .

It's very close to where friends of mine live , it's about 20 minutes from where I live but this company has come in and they want to clear I'm trying to remember exactly more than 80 acres , so that would be probably like 35 hectares of land , including 45 acres of forest to put in solar panels . So that just cannot let this stand .

So what's meaningful part of it is yes , I'm against this , but what's been meaningful is my finding a way to speak publicly about this , because I can speak publicly in the abstract about anything . I can go to a conference on the other side of the world and I can speak .

But when it's your neighbors and you know that people disagree , that's a whole other thing . But I'm finding my way . So last week there was a public hearing about this and I went and my husband went and the vast majority of us were against this project , perhaps because the people that show up are people who are motivated to make a case .

But we did it in a way , you know , this wasn't necessarily planned . I didn't know how it was going to go . That was inviting . So after all of this happened , the utility commissioner said this was the best hearing he has ever presided over . And , as an example , a solar advocate got up and he said you know , solar , this is what we've got to do .

You know , maybe it's not , you know it's not convenient for everybody , you know , but solar , solar , solar . This is how we're going to address climate change .

And then I got up and I said I disagree , but I really want to have a conversation with this fellow because he seems really well informed , seems really to care about this , and I think it's really important that we step back and we look at what is climate change , what is climate that ?

If we step back and we pose the question , how does the Earth manage heat , then that opens up a whole realm of possibilities and we owe it to ourselves to reckon with the fact that climate is bigger than carbon . Carbon is a part of it , but what is carbon ? Carbon is part of life forms and you know there's a carbon cycle .

How do we interact with the carbon cycle and all of these other questions and basically what you know . As far as I can see , what it comes down to is supporting nature's capacity to regulate and dissipate heat . So if we are undermining that capacity in order to strip the land and put on solar panels , how are we helping ?

So I've learned that I can be an activist without while maintaining relationships , and in this moment I don't know how it is in Australia , but in the United States , if we can have productive , respectful conversations with people that we disagree with on important matters , then that in itself is meaningful . So , that's how that feels .

So it's not to oversimplify this that there'll still be things that happen that create the tensions , but there is a way to transcend it , to keep a broader realm of possibilities alive . On the one hand , judy , from what you've been saying , I want to get to what it means for the earth to regulate temperature and waters .

Place in that which you've done so much on , which is so obvious when you say it . You know the water would be the cooling mechanism , and we've talked a bit about that on the podcast . We might come back to that in the context too , of course , of major flooding , where I am right now this year and where you are right now and where I

am . Yeah . So , but let's circle back to it , because I really want to follow on with the thread of this sort of community work , if you like , or or you could . Even others might call it political work .

Whatever you want to call it , it's the way of setting the foundations with people in direct contact , that opens up possibilities that perhaps we've never even thought were remotely considerable before . Right , and in a way that , yeah , can often just blow the lid off the limitations we've put in ourselves . So you know what I'm talking about , of course .

Well , let's anchor it in the book , indeed , that you mentioned before , the reindeer chronicles . I'm still blown away by your chapter three , which is really saying something , because all the other chapters are these incredible stories of landscape renewal and cultural resurgence , and and at scale in some cases too , which of course , people can delve into more .

But this chapter titled beyond the impossible conflict and consensus in New Mexico , where you'd watched a community move from sabotage , suspicion and gunfire to committing to rebuild generations , old friendships and restore the land in three days .

And my kind of you know relationship to my work and kind of how I saw the world was that people just need to know , people just need information .

And as soon as people , it's a , my job was to get this information out there , with the assumption that as soon as people understood how important soil is , understood how working with the water cycle can help us address climate change , understood how animal land dynamics are really central to helping our landscapes thrive , that then everybody would do the right thing ,

you know . So I kind of thought all I have to do is explain it . And then at one point I was at a conference . It was actually in Mexico and I'm sitting there I am hearing the same thing that I've been hearing at conference after conference . And you know , it kind of hit it . There was kind of a pattern .

It was like , you know , things are dire but there's hope , you know , but then we've got these challenges , but then we can deal with them this way , you know . So it was like this roller coaster and I was sitting there and I just thought , you know , I cannot ride this same , you know the same roller coaster anymore .

You know something that , yeah , this just is not getting us anywhere and all of what we're talking about , they're people problems . All environmental challenges are ultimately people problems , so you know .

So I check out , you know I'm sitting there , I check out , I take a walk to the back of the room and then I bump into this fellow named Jeff Goble , who I had heard about and he happened to be at that conference and I knew that he had done this consensus work and , as our mutual friend colleague , peter Donovan , explained , that this he does transformative

work and that what you do is you sit around a circle and you talk and you listen to each other . And my reaction was always I'm sorry , you know , I don't have the patience for that . Just , you know , I've got to get this , I've got to get information , I've got to report and I've got to explain it , and then everyone will do the right thing .

So you know , but here I was and I just said , hi , jeff , I've heard wonderful things about your work . And I asked him and then he shared a bit with me about you know something , that actually an amazing story where in Africa , in Mali , people were really suffering and they it was like you know , 85% food insecurity .

People were afraid there were 12 tribes that were at war and you had pastoralists and agriculturalists and they were fighting over the land and all of this . And he explained how we worked with these people and how a lot had to do with their belief systems . So he asked them what is your goal ? Greater food security ? Why is this impossible ?

Well , they had lots of reasons why it was impossible the rains don't come , people are lazy , there's no money , the soil's bad , all of these things . And then he said , okay , do you think that maybe you could enhance food security ? 10% , you know , because they had been talking about different strategies . And they said , okay , yeah , I think we can do that .

How about 20% ? And then they looked at each other Well , maybe , if we try really hard and we really apply all those techniques that we've talked about . Then he said how about 50% ? They said , no , no , no , no , no , that's impossible .

Okay , then he said , well , given that it's impossible , if it were possible , what would you do , and then they had a whole list of things they would do . They would plant more legumes that would enrich the soil , they would organize so that they knew who was doing what , and so it wasn't a big surprise when people would encounter each other on the land .

They would manage their livestock more effectively . They had all these different strategies . Okay , so Jeff went away back to the US , came back 15 months later , and as he was driving up in his Jeep , there were people lined up along the road and they were so excited they couldn't even wait for him to arrive . They had to be there .

They said that they had increased food production 78% . So the blockages were in their own minds and that was really powerful .

So I learned this A few of us did practice consensus sessions where it was just practice , and it was just a few of us , but I got a sense of the texture of it and , in particular , got a sense of what happens when you trust people and you can articulate what you're afraid of .

And then , when you can do that and articulate your aspirations , you're no longer protecting your fear and so much of what we do is that we're barricading our tender , vulnerable places . But once you open up and then you no longer have to put all that energy into convincing yourself , you don't have to be afraid . Then you can come up with other possibilities .

So I got a sense of that . So then I went to that New Mexico workshop and that was very powerful and that I know informs what I'm doing locally .

Because when we care passionately about something like I care about the landscape in Vermont and I feel really strongly that degrading our landscape , cutting down forest and covering potentially productive land with solar panels , when there's really not a plan to make that land effective , there are possibilities , but that's not what's happening here .

I care passionately about that . But when you care passionately , the impulse that we have is to state our case and try to convince the opposition that we're right .

But I think that this work has trained me and I hadn't realized it consciously until I was actually in the moment that listening to other people and listening to people who don't agree with you is really powerful , because then you can build trust .

Because if you just say you know what , I'm right , you're wrong and I don't have to listen to you because I know I'm right , well , where do you go with that ? Then everyone's got big walls between them .

But knowing that everybody , certainly everyone in this situation except actually the company that's doing this , which I do not I feel really strongly that they're not acting in good faith .

But local people who say we need solar and local people who say we need the landscape everyone wants the same thing , which is for this area to thrive and for people to have access to what they need and for us to have biodiversity and all of that . So when you empower someone by acknowledging that they want what you want , then it really opens up .

So yeah , so I wrote the chapter and I really , to be honest , didn't really think about the consensus work . It was kind of an anecdote in my book and whatever . And then during COVID , a number of people were saying we're all stuck at home , can we try this on Zoom ?

So , including some people who learned about it from my book and a number of people in Australia . So it was this Australia , us , new England , which is where I am , and the Pacific Northwest , and a group of us , I'd say kind of fluctuated between 20 and 25 people , but the core is about 22 people .

So we went through the whole training of this consensus method and we saw transformation of people's lives . I mean , I experienced it in a kind of modest way , but many people anyway . It was very , very powerful .

So I do carry this and I actually secured the URL , do the impossibleearth and we're working with that because , yeah , it's that pivot from just I know it takes a lot more . You can't just like start right here but , given that it's impossible , if it were possible , what would you do ?

Because that takes the pressure off If you say , yeah , it's impossible , but if it were possible , what would you do ? Once you start coming up with possibilities , you're on the path .

And I come back to your local story with the solar guy , let's say , and you and what you're interested in , there's so much scope for win-win , isn't there , I mean , you can see it .

So there is the possibility at the surface of being able to come together on that , but it doesn't often just happen , and so running through these processes that are facilitated with these skills , and for more of us to learn these skills to be able to do that , seems really important .

So it's interesting that you sort of taken up that mantle and indeed you said you've been developing some tools with others to do more of it . So is this something that you're sort of looking to move into more yourself ?

What I bring in is partly the journalist , so the curiosity I'm always asking questions but I also have a clinical degree , so the listening , and really listening at a deep level for what's underneath what someone saying , comes naturally to me . But everybody brings something into that . So we are working on this and we did a little .

I mean , we didn't plan on it being like a trial run , but a friend of ours locally that has a challenge , that has an impossible dream , we got together yesterday on Zoom and we did the do the impossible , and so our friend could see what of the obstacles that she sees before her are in her own mind and are or are actual .

And she's at the point where the challenges you know the obstacles that are in her own mind she recognizes them . She's done a lot of work , she's been grappling with this for a long time , so she can move in and out of that . And then the practical obstacles . You know practical stuff usually we can deal with . We're pretty smart . We know how to create funds .

We know how to apply for specific things . You know , like when it's just something to do , but when it's in our own minds , that's the challenge .

And Charlie Massey down here says the same thing . He called it . The reward was five , six years old Now he thought it'd be much more advanced . I mean , he sees it taking on as you do too . We all see that , but it's still marginal . Why is that , when it's so amazing ? And that hit Jeff .

And so Jeff thought , okay , I see what needs to be done , and got onto this and you're seeing similarly .

I mean , one thing is and this is something that I've experienced with this solar person that I had coffee with today that when you have invested a whole lot of energy and time into one way of looking at things , it's really , really hard to walk that back . So in this particular case , it's that climate change is all about carbon If you have invested .

So what I would see in this conversation is kind of like okay , I see a holistic view , I see where the water cycle comes in , but no , it's the way I thought it was all . So it's really interesting when you can watch someone bump up against the possibility that there's another way of looking at things .

So in talking to that person , you need to or what I felt was to have compassion . I don't mean in a patronizing way , but just like , okay , I hear you , this is where you are , and maybe you'll open up and expand your realm of curiosity , and maybe not , but I can be present , for either I can be present .

For that matter , I mean , even with some of the stuff you've talked about already here and obviously you've written about , I think of so much more of what we're learning about epigenetics and even polyvagal theory and how we come to let go of our traumas or even just live with them and not have them hamstring us .

This is all bound in too right , and you've experienced this personally

too . I was really captured by a line a sort of a simple line in a way , but it was a beautiful one when you were talking about the young people in Spain .

And you said in your 20s you were probably the same .

And then I was reflecting back on my 20s and my own challenges , which I did not see at the time had anything to do with ecology . What I remember writing there was that I had the gift , the benefit , of what I saw as a stable climate .

It's something that I didn't even think about , that the change of seasons which were I live in New England when you have the beautiful snows , you have the beautiful leaves falling and then you have the hot summers that it's so regular , it's so predictable , so elemental , that I knew it in my bones and I hadn't realized , just from an animal we are animals from

an animal standpoint just how deep , how foundational , that knowledge of the world that surrounded me , knowing I might say , bummer , it's not going to be summer anymore , it's going to get cold , but I knew it and it was always that way , and that predictability just helped make the world safe .

It's what you know , that felt comfortable and that young people today don't have that and that just broke my heart and feeling yeah , just feeling like such a deep design , like having had all the benefit of that predictability , just so deeply wanting to be of service . Like I said , my son is that age but he can't take that in that reality . It's interesting .

It's interesting that and I'm sure he's not unusual in that that as a young child he was so attuned to justice , environment and just the nuances . And then , as you go through into your teens and twenties , then other things become important and that's not top of mind for him now , but I know it will be .

I can say that now and you know , it's things that many families have had and but , you know , and including a child , you know , on top of a childhood illness that I realized also threw me up , but it's , it's nothing that out of the ordinary , which also gives me huge compassion because everybody's got that .

So I think , if we begin with an understanding that pretty much everybody has some trauma , whether it's , you know , inherited , you know intergenerational , whether it's stuff that happens in your life , um yeah , and so to really to really understand that as we move through the world .

But the thing is that even back in my twenties I felt alone in it and didn't have words for it ?

And how interesting that , following these tales of extraordinary regeneration ostensibly out there , as the problem was perceived to be , ostensibly out there , we just need to transition energy systems or or even restore landscapes out there , but actually no , it's in here and between here , that your journey of reporting and going through your realizations that the facts

aren't cutting out that that leads to this healing

. And that does make me think too about your opening dedication in chronicles to your father , who was an MD , a medical doctor , and you had this again , a beautiful line that he devoted his life to healing . I wonder what was the essence in him , Cause that line sort of hints at something bigger .

It wasn't that mechanistic medicine thing necessarily , or was it no ?

Actually , I lost both my parents in the last few years you know and that you know , for anybody you know has a lot . You know , like that's a life transition , yeah , but I can say that even now , when I go back to my hometown , people are saying you know , people come up to me , your father saved my son's life .

Or you know , like , and you know , I feel deep pride and pride that you know when he would talk about medicine . Oh my gosh , it's such another era like . You know that he said he would , he said that he could . You know , like , touch someone's hand and know what was going on . You know , know what that person needed .

You know so very , very deep healing Observation .

Yeah , you can see that , you can see the threads that well , again , it's just life , so the characteristics of tending for life , that through the domains , whether it's , you know , sort of officially medicine and health , or whether it's land , or whether it's community , or whether it's politics , it's just the same threads player .

That's profound , you got that and in a way it hits me that your life is another manifestation of it .

of reporters have talked about this and climate scientists , you know , when you're in it it's , you know , it is kind of exhausting . And what I realized personally was that , as I kind of , you know , started to open up to some more personal stuff , is that I needed to find another relationship to this work .

And I think that we all go through different phases and I say this to you know , give people permission to , you know , like the work that the need to heal our landscapes and address climate change , that's with us , and so , like many other passages in our lives , we may be in relation to that challenge in different ways , you know .

So I think earlier on I was kind of an ingenuous like wow , soil and water , and wow , we can do this , and I just want to tell everybody , you know , but then that no longer is authentic as one moves through things and as you experience different things , such as you know , I was talking to somebody earlier today .

So you know , I live in New England , in Vermont , and Vermont , I know , has this , you know , reputation as a green state where the green mountains and it's , like , you know , cool in the . You know like , you know cool weather and you know brisk and snow and all this you know .

And then sometimes it is I can sort of kind of hide here and say , you know , and even as I'm looking at difficult news across the world that like , okay , I've got this , you know , like I'm in this nice place and I can just kind of be here , but there've been fires in Canada , so smoke has come down here and that has never , ever happened and I was

describing that to somebody that it felt like a loss of innocence . You know to be in Vermont and to be affected by the ash and you know we're all different . So I was surprised because I don't have respiratory problems . You know people with respiratory problems .

You know , like when the air quality is bad , you need to do something about it , you need to close the windows and all that , but I don't have respiratory problems , but I felt affected and I was surprised . Yeah , like I said , it's like this loss of innocence . And then we had floods and I haven't heard about floods in your part of the world .

What has happened ?

I'd like to come back to that and it broke all flood level records by more than a meter , by more than three feet , four feet . And there's a bridge which essentially connects east and west Kimberley at Fitzroy Crossing . It's like the Titanic of bridges , or it was . Because that's gone , it wiped it out , the people there .

Six months on , by and large , there's just about no one back in their houses . They're working at it but , like the bridge , it'll be a process of years . There's frustration in that too and there's sadness . There's beauty to community coming together . Rebecca Solent's written a lot about this sort of stuff .

There's certainly beauty and the way people are finding their way together , but there's no sugarcoating the baseline reality of how full on that was and how we're only just still ticking up on that trajectory of consequence for as long as we don't turn this ship around .

So there's that , and partly the reason why it's really acute to me now as well , and talking to you , judy , is because it's happening in Vermont and , yes , even the fire , so there's parallel scenarios . I mean it's all across Europe at the moment too .

It's because the water story , as I alluded to before , you have found , and I have found certainly to be central and it almost sounds silly , yes , to have to highlight that as the source of all life on the one hand , as a cooling mechanism on the other hand .

It seems so obvious , but only obvious if you have come to see , I guess , the holistic picture for one of a better word . But it's worth , I think , talking a little bit about this double-edged sword in a way . But again , it's not double-edged . You is a coherent whole once you understand the way these cycles work .

But it can appear to be a double-edged in a sense . Okay , so if water is the key to our cooling of the climate , the key to our life back in landscapes and so forth , I come to think of it as this great , big planetary drink , in a way that we're restoring all these functions .

But in the other hand , that seems absurd in the context of flooding here that wipes out all this infrastructure in people's communities . But indeed restoring the water cycle partly mitigates that tendency to right , so it's a flood prevention tool too .

There was an amazing line , again that is in your book , that Neil Spackman said in the Middle East . I really like it . It says a desert is a place where , when it rains , it floods , but if we're cultivating something else , then the inference is it's not going to be so susceptible to flooding . Can you talk to that a little bit , judy ?

What have you seen , what have you learned and how you're coming to think about the stories that have really sparked your imagination ?

So what Neil Spackman was saying and I thought this was really , really interesting , because when we think about deserts , we always think that there's a particular threshold of rainfall , that if you get less than that it's a desert and if you get more than that it's not a desert .

But he was talking about function , how the land functions , and that if there's rain and the land is incapable of taking in that rain , then that's a desert , because nothing's going to grow there , it's not living soil .

But if the rain soaks in , then the state of that land has changed , it's different and it can hold water , and when it holds water you have life , Then you're supporting microbes , and then you're supporting primitive plants and then you're supporting higher-level plants and there's a wonderful picture . So Neil went back after a few years and he took pictures .

And you look at this landscape with copious grasses coming out of the ground and really dense , tufted grasses , and you would look at that and this was Western Saudi Arabia that a few years before looked every bit the desert . You would not think of that as a desert .

So I think what's really important there is just the notion of function , how things function , because we often don't look at that as an example when it comes to water challenges . It's what does or doesn't come down from the sky . Until recently and I think this is changing that the state of the land wasn't considered .

But feeling that you can't really talk about floods and droughts without talking about the land , and there's a lot that we can do . But I got to say the degree of the rainfall .

Sure , if we had healthier land and our farms were more regenerative in Vermont we would probably have and maybe if we didn't design our communities , the built environment , to just sluice water away , if we had different strategies , that way we would be much less flooding .

But these were pretty intense rains and so I'm inclined to to start exploring other lines of inquiry about this , and this is something I've written about actually in all three books the Biotic Pump . I think it's really important to understand how our landscapes work , and the Biotic Pump is basically a function of natural forest that moves moisture across the world .

We've heard about atmospheric rivers and what that is is that a concentration of trees . There's a lot of transpiration , a lot of moisture that's taken from the ground that the trees take up .

All plants do this , but trees are of a size and forests are a concentration of trees that water from the ground is taken up and it moves upward through the trees and it's emitted as water vapor . So that's important on many levels because that's a cooling mechanism that consumes heat at all scales whenever there are plants . That's happening .

But with the Biotic Pump is that that creates a low pressure zone and that when that , all that moisture comes up and then starts to condense and that pulls in moisture from elsewhere , and then the atmospheric river is all that moisture that's brought up into the atmosphere or the lower atmosphere .

Anyway , an important point is that the movement of moisture is driven by life , by forests , by plants , and the state of our plant ecosystems are determined by animals and other wildlife , by birds that bring seeds and so therefore , planting trees you have a diversity and the animals that are managing the forests and also bringing seeds around and carrying moisture

around and fertilizing . So it all works together . But in terms of the Biotic Pump . What I'm understanding is that when the Biotic Pump isn't functioning , when there's a loss of there's not enough of a healthy forest , that a lot of that moisture and heat kind of stays down lower in the atmosphere and kind of sits there .

So this is something I'm looking to explore . I know there's another scientist that I've talked to , actually a group of scientists from Eastern Europe that their work is kind of loosely known as the New Water Paradigm .

There's a book that they've written called Water for the Recovery of the Climate , and Michael Kravchik talks about the failure of the small water cycle which is keeping water , local transpiration and condensation , so one raindrop can cycle many , many times .

He talks about the kind of heat plates when there's like a lot of drought and heat in one area , then the moisture . You don't get rain there , but the moisture sort of collects and keeps moving and the US weather moves to the east and then there's all that unspent moisture and then it all comes down at once . I don't know .

I mean , I'll think that I understand it and then I'll realize that there's yet another layer to try to understand . But I feel that all of these perspectives explain a good piece of it .

But firstly , just to sign off on the fact that you mentioned at the start there you talked about just the volume of rain is also unprecedented , and that's been said about here as well .

But interestingly , I've been researching it because I really wanna know how much more rain there was relative to how much higher the flooding record was set , or how much was the flooding record due to it cheating off compacted land . It's all assumed that flood level came from level of rainfall .

But even in the first Bureau of Meteorology report I've just read on it it's mentioned how much rain they got , the highest amount of rain in a single day , but it's not correlated in any way . Total rain over a given period much less than compared to past flood , the last flood record that there was .

That's what I hope to be able to find the data on , to see if we can get at least a full enough of a pitch and to have the assumptions that , oh , there must have been record rain , the fed record flood . Have the assumptions covered Cause we get so much here in general , like it's perhaps not as discernible as it might be in Vermont .

But I actually hope to have more on that soon , perhaps when I speak to Chris Backett Kachana station in a few weeks . But for now I wanna draw the thread between , yeah , incredible restoration stories , such as in the Middle East , for example , which of course was the fertile crescent .

It's where this civilization wherein began , but it hasn't been fertile for some time and it's an instructive point that again Charlie Massey makes that we're still on that trajectory of desertification . But , wow , it's been turned around there too .

And , yes , in a desertifying landscape of the Kimberley in the East , Chris Hengler and his family bought a well really what had become an abandoned dustfile and turned it around and it's become one of the most popular stories put out on this podcast , With , obviously , the centrality of animals in the landscape too . And , yeah , water soaking into that landscape .

Now it's to behold . But right now , as was covered last time , going back almost two years , there's a sat hearing like an official mediation process , because the government department has ordered him to shoot a good chunk of the animals that are behind the restoration because they are deemed pests .

These are the donkeys that he's reestablished , heard , behaved with and got them working on the land . So for those who haven't listened to those earlier episodes , you can check back in on that episode . A hundred was the most recent one that's become the second most popular one out on the podcast .

The details literally we went up the range where the donkeys do their work , where the cattle can't go , for example . It's an extraordinary story , but the government obviously has this compliance area , which sees its task as making station owners shoot donkeys on site .

They've ordered this to happen and we've been in two years or the best part of negotiations , mediation , to arrive at an outcome , because Kachana obviously appealed that they don't intend shooting the source of the regeneration that they've observed there and that they're managing there .

This process is coming to a head in December , so it will go one way or the other in December and with so much on the line , it makes me think of a number of things , Judy . It makes me think of the community consensus stuff that we talked about . You know it's in mediation . If it was skilled mediation of that nature , I wonder what it would come to .

And I don't know , maybe it is Maybe and maybe that's possible , Maybe it's possible . What's certainly true to say , I think , is that if this comes on the side of Kachana , it's a game changer to think that we will then have sanctioned use of so-called pest animals who can be managed in the way that Chris is demonstrating .

In other words , you'd be redefining the notion of what's managed . You would say what the government is categorizing currently , still and historically as wild donkeys , that actually they are managed donkeys , Just sure , not with fences around them .

But hey , most of the cattle up in these parts don't have fences around them , they don't even have herd behavior , they're just scattered to the winds and shredding the place . So the irony's a deep . But the potential is huge if it comes the right way , if it does have depth enough facilitation and advocacy in coming together .

But I do fear it's sort of going the other way , in the absence of that potentially , that it's entrenched positions being defended ultimately . So that's my fear . My hope is that it's game changer . But you've seen a comparable situation right In Norway . Would you draw a thread there ? Perhaps ? You've seen even other situations similar to this .

So the government had determined that there were too many reindeer for the fragile tundra ecosystem you know the far north , you know close to the Arctic Circle and the government said that all reindeer herders these are indigenous Sami people had to cut the number of their herds .

Okay , so there was a young fellow , I think it was all of 23 years old , and he said no , I'm not going to do that , and if the government institutes this , that means that my generation will never get to start . You know , we'll never really be able to fulfill our intergenerational obligation of herding reindeer because we have such small numbers to begin with .

So what happened was he kept winning cases . You know it went up and up and up to the courts and everyone was kind of cheering this young man on and then finally the government prevailed . You know , which was really , really tragic . But what's important is to understand that the government had it wrong .

They could only see that , oh , these animals are on the land . So they must be extracting value from the land .

They must be harming the land , you know , eating the plants , and therefore that's something negative , but as it turns out that the reindeer actually are helping to maintain the tundra conditions , so the way it works is that I say the way it works as if it were a technology but , you know this is how it is , that the reindeer , in the summer , are browsing .

So by browsing , they are managing the you know small shrubs and you know small trees , and by doing that they are removing the dark leaves , which means that you know , the dark leaves absorb heat because they have a low albedo or reflectivity , and so the native heath underneath , like that's light that reflects heat , so that keeps everything cool .

So , like all species , they you know the reindeer are helping to create the conditions under which they thrive . So also , by managing the brush and small trees , they're keeping them small .

Up in Norway , because there is warming , you know they're getting what they call shrubification , that more and more of these shrubs are getting , you know , established , but the reindeer are keeping them in check .

And then in the winter , the reindeer , as they move , as their herded , in huge numbers , they are pressing down on the snow pack , they're trampling down the snow and while it sounds like , well , wait , why would you want to do that ? Because you know pristine snow is just , you know , like really fluffy and beautiful and all that .

But you know , ensure I like to cross country , but um and frolic on that , but so that the fluffy snow acts as an insulator and by pressing down on the snow pack that is exposing the soil to the very cold , which means that the permafrost , you know the ground , stays frozen . So again , that's maintaining the conditions under which these animals thrive .

And research has been done by the scientists that run Pleistocene Park , that's up in Siberia , and they found that when there were grazing animals in the winter it kept the land and 10 to 15 degrees colder than without grazing . Hmm yeah , so the government was wrong .

environment for small marsupials . And then they're managing fire , as Chris Angler says , they're part of the fire crew because they're managing the brush that in the dry season would dry out and become tender for fire . So and they're keeping moisture on the landscape .

I mean , it's really worth noting that animals on the landscape , it's water , you know they're moving moisture around .

right but I'm curious you said in our exchanges we've been in exchange with Chris and others obviously over the last couple years on this and you said that you'd be , you were planning to spend time with some donkeys around your area and that that would likely be a departure from the kind of writing you usually do . Is that still current ?

to thrive , and that there's Something to explore there . And , yeah , I may well yeah . I just don't know right now . Yeah , writers aren't machines , a less .

Basically , I took a permaculture design course and then , when we applied a permaculture lens to our land , we realize that our priority was biodiversity . So , whatever we can do to support biodiversity and in this particular context , the best way to do that is through intervening on behalf of at risk native pollinators , because we can do that very good .

And then you know , lo and behold , everyone turns out , everyone hangs around and has beer together , and then it was nine thirty . I thought , well , well , you know what's going on here . I think I'll give that a try . So I did and went in with Absolutely no expectations and six years later I'm a second degree black belt .

And I can tell you that if anyone had said to me years ago that I'm you know that it was even within the realm of possibility that I would have a black belt in karate I would have said they were out of their minds . But it just goes to show you just , you just do it , and then you've realized you've done it .

Well , judy , what a pleasure we so good go on . There's so much isn't there , but but yeah , to close , today , as I mentioned earlier , we talk a little bit about a piece of music that's been significant to you and I am , I preempting on Julie , to think that you might have even thought about your son that you mentioned earlier , because he's a muse .

So , yeah , so there are a lot of you know is a lot of the songs are about , you know , relationships and this , and that there's one song of his that you know is a little different . It's about his relationship to a place and it begins talking about water .

It's about New York , so it's called New York skyline and I love that song because it's totally unpredictable and it evokes the sense of awe , as that I remember as a young person moving to New York like here I am , I'm , you know , I'm in this big city and by being in the city I see endless possibilities and you know , just observing how there's nature in the

city and there's a nature bumps up against what we've built and yeah , it's a beautiful song . I was like I'm gonna go back to the city . Beautiful song , I will send it to you wonderful .

So , yeah , thank you for that and thanks for being with me .

And if you'd like to hear more along the lines of those community processes , tune in to Tim Hollo in episode 170 , Amanda Cahill in episode 134 or Katherine Trebeck in episode 160 . There'll be more on this topic too and , as I said , we'll be back at Kachana , if all goes well , in a couple of weeks . So stand by for more from there too .

This episode was recorded back at the Derby Media Aboriginal Corporation , aka 6DBY , deadly Derby Radio . Cheers again to Chris and Zach and everyone out there . Love what you're doing and thanks a lot for having me . Just over a month to go now till the next big regenerative agriculture event in Australia , in Margaret River , WA .

I'm fortunate to be wearing the MC guernsey and really look forward to seeing some of you there . The full program is out any day now , I'm told, on the conference website . That link is also in the show notes .

For subscribers to the podcast, I'll continue to send you behind the scenes footage and photos and things as we get around the country , and if you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber , I'd love you to join us . It's with thanks , as always , to this community of generous supporters that this episode was made possible .

Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration . com forward slash support with thanks again , and thanks for sharing the podcast , as usual when you think of someone who might enjoy it , and for continuing to rate and review it on your favoured app . It all helps .

The music you're hearing is New York Skyline by Brendan Epri le . My name's Anthony James . Thanks for listening .