I had never read anything by Gretel Ehrlich before this and I was pleased to find that her voice (audio and written) sounds a lot like Anne Lamott. California boomer women, I guess.

This book is a memoir of sorts, a fractured catalog of events in her life and her personal experiences with climate change. She spent many years ranching in Wyoming as a single woman, extensive periods in remote Greenland experiencing arctic ice culture, and a long visit the backcountry of Zimbabwe learning about how rotational grazing can reverse climate change and prevent drought. She also employed rotational grazing on her Wyoming ranch to great effect: water was pulled into the ground regenerating long-lost native rye grazing pastures that were able to support a herd of wild elk in the winter and her herd of cattle in the summer. It made me wonder if this could be used in Brazil to stop greedy deforestation of the Amazon in order to grab more grazing land for cattle. It would be nice if the UN or someone could step in with grants to get ranchers the basic fencing and water tanks needed to set it up.

I liked hearing about the adventurous life she led. In addition to stints in Wyoming, Greenland and Zimbabwe, she also toured Kosovo after the war, closed down a ranch on an island off the coast of California, was stuck by lightning and recovered, made movies, wrote magazine articles, learned to break horses from a horse whisperer, lost homes to divorce and wildfires, nearly starved to death while hiking a glacier, buried her parents, and had relationships with a variety of men.

The problem is that the book is not arranged by any discernible logic and it comes out as stream-of-consciousness glimpses of her life. I had zero reference for what year she was talking about, which husband if any she was married to at the time, when the events happen in relation to each other, how old she is, etc etc. That was very frustrating and made my interest in the book dwindle (unbelievable, considering all that happened), so I wouldn't recommend the book unless you don't really care about that kind of thing.