Refugium

All it takes is humility, deep listening, and allowing yourself to fall in love again with our holy and wild earth.

Even before I read Deb Reinstra's book entitled Refugia, I was intrigued by the image of it.

that it could serve as a guide and a model for the kind of organizing I think we all may feel challenged to do as the political and ecological crises intensify.

Refugia is a biological term that refers to those little plants and animals who find themselves in these little pockets of protected refuge at times of what, quote, widespread environmental stress.

In other words, when the surrounding areas become uninhabitable, in stresses like volcanoes and earthquakes and glacier slides.

But even then, there's like these little pockets of life that survives, like hiding behind a rock or in a gully or up on a peak above the disaster.

So it was sort of an explanation for why anything survived the Ice Age.

And it has become a lot more interesting to biologists and wildlife managers as something we can sort of nurture and create to renew ecosystems.

As we recently wrapped up our fourth season exploring what it means to live, love, and lead in a climate-changed world, we are taking some time this fall to share a few podcast swaps with other shows we deeply admire.

First up is the Refugia podcast, hosted by our friend and colleague, Professor Debra Reenstra.

If you are a longtime listener, Debra's voice will likely be familiar to you.

She was a Climate Changed guest back in Season 2, Episode 5.

Her book, Refugia Faith, has been a grounding resource for our community.

In her podcast, Debra explores refugia, a biological term for habitats in nature where life endures in times of crisis.

She applies it as a metaphor, discovering how people of faith can become people of refugia by nurturing holy, life-giving spaces in their bioregions and human cultural systems, even in times of severe disturbance.

Thank you.

So you're an English professor and I studied English in undergrad and you would have been my favourite professor, no doubt.

And you've also written a book called Refugia Faith.

As I understand it, refugia is an ecological concept or a kind of biological concept.

phenomena but you've taken it and it's um your book is about how it is a beautiful metaphor for for christians in the church but also um gives an enormous amount of hope for earth keeping and we'd love to dig more into that i know that you've you've had a lot to say not just this one book another book coming and the podcast and we will put all the links to those things in the notes but could you help us draw the lines between you as an English literature professor and you as an earthkeeper and inspirer of people in ecology around the world?

Drenching, you can see the drench that you're putting into your animals.

Refugia, like, you can't see those population of worms and say like, "Oh, those are resistant and those aren't, so I'll give that, that sheep that drench," 'cause, you know, you, you don't know that.

Um, and it's the same for the avoidance thing, like you can't see the larvae on the paddocks, so how can you possibly avoid them? And that's, those two things are the gap that Daggy's trying to fill basically.

We're trying to show, trying to make those invisible concepts visible to farmers.

A string of islands that once linked two populations become scattered specks of land no one reaches for thousands of years.

That's where refugia and bottlenecks really matter.

Refugia are the safe pockets that stay liveable when most surrounding areas become hostile.

A wet valley in a drying landscape, a sheltered coastal shelf during a cold snap, a forest belt clinging to a mountain range while plains turn to desert.

During severe climate swings, different human species would have been squeezed back into these refuges.