Goatwalking: A Guide to Wildland Living; A Quest for the Peaceable Kingdom by Jim Corbett (review)

Reviews 243 Goatwalking: A Guide to Wildland Living; A Questfor the Peaceable Kingdom. ByJim Corbett. (New York: Viking, 1991. 237 pages, $19.95.) From the premise that it is possible for individuals with sufficient knowl­ edge of range-goat husbandry and edible plants to depend only upon a couple of milk goats for the nourishment and liquid necessary for survival in desert wildlands, Jim Corbett draws dramatic implications for the practice of a viable land ethic and the wholesale restructuring of society upon communitarian and ecological principles. In the process, Corbett somehow manages to deliver an intriguing autobiography, detail nuances of desert survival, challenge and rein­ terpret Western and Eastern philosophic traditions, negotiate convergences of Catholic liberation theology and Quaker belief, and depict the struggle of the sanctuary movement to assist political refugees from El Salvador during the mid 1980s. From pastoral nomadism to political activism, Corbett explores the possibility of discovering, adopting and maintaining a right way of being in the world. Though Larry McMurtry once called Edward Abbey “the Thoreau of the American West,”Jim Corbett may perhaps be more deserving of the title. At any rate, Goatwalking can certainly be read as a western Walden: Corbett’s rumina­ tions upon wilderness and natural history lead as inevitably as those of the New England sage to thorny issues of ethical judgement and social action. Corbett, however, even manages to work beyond Thoreau’s curmudgeonly isolationism and symbolic civil disobedience to articulate the dynamic workings of what he calls the “covenant community”and a process of “civil initiative”as foundations for healthful identity, revolutionary involvement, and a right relation with the earth. Goatwalking is a difficult book, dense with data, speculation, and moral imperative. The text defies taxonomy, but one recognizes—among other inter­ woven genre—the continuity of the confessional. Corbett’s severe self-scrutiny of a life lived in the demanding and fragile landscapes of the Sonoran desert and the American Southwest challenges attentive readers into honest confron­ tation with the social and ecological contradictions of their own existence and points to no easy way out. Though the terrain is treacherous, Corbett is at least a competent, if exacting, guide, and the example of his personal quest for a peaceable kingdom should serve to inform and inspire fellow travelers. MARK SCHLENZ University of California, Santa Barbara ...