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This isn’t just a book about sheep, of course—although, as anyone who’s ever spent time with sheep knows, they are incredible creatures, and Whybrow writes about them with curiosity and insight. It’s a book about shepherding as a way of life. It’s about pastoralism—a way of being in relationship with place that people all over the world have practiced for millennia, and a way of being that is under threat today. Woven among Whybrow’s recollections of learning how to care for the land and its creatures, both wild and domestic, are meditations on being a daughter and being a mother, on the cyclical nature of farming, and on what belonging even means.
Whybrow shares stories of hard lambing seasons, encounters with coyotes, meals shared with land stewards from all over the country, the strange wonder of new motherhood, the grief of watching a beloved parent age, long winters, and mundane conversations with neighbors. As the seasons of her life go by, it’s the sheep that teach her about what it truly means to love, care for, belong to, and understand a place.
Much of this book is about death, as much of farming is about death. I was often reminded of Mary Oliver as I read, who writes about death incessantly, and, in doing so, reminds us to pay attention and love deeply. Whybrow’s wisdom is just as poignant. There are no lectures here, no carefully packaged nuggets of advice, no easy answers. Whybrow doesn’t offer empty comfort or simple salvation. The questions that shepherding requires her to confront are thorny and complicated. What does it mean to tend? How do we care for creatures whose languages we don’t speak? How do we love places (farms, forests, nations) with fraught histories? What can any of us do, in the face of environmental destruction, climate upheaval, and devastating change, to care for each other and the world we love?
Whybrow’s evocative prose brought me right back to that summer when I was 22, to the scent of lanolin, the morning mist hanging over the valley, the sweet ache in my muscles. But that’s not why I think you should read this book, too. This is a memoir that speaks to all of us—to anyone who cares about what’s green and growing, to anyone who has ever loved a non-human being, to anyone who’s known grief, to anyone who wants a different world, but loves this one anyway.