Introduction to The Shepherds

I am a shepherd.
There. I’ve said it.
I am a shepherd.

Being a shepherd is a bit like being a surfer. Or being in the Mafia. Or a being ordained as a monk. Once you're in, you're never really out. The life stays with you. It shapes how you move through the world. And although more than a quarter of a century has passed since I last walked the muscular hills and ridges of the High Country on New Zealand’s South Island, with dogs at my heels and a manuka stick in my hand, the imprint of those years remains as clear to me as the tracks on a snow slope.

It’s a young man’s calling, shepherding. I began at eighteen. As I grew older, I moved on—seeking new places, new pursuits—but the qualities I gained from that life have never left me. Resourcefulness, independence, and self-reliance. To be observant. To have an eye for weather, and a respect for solitude. These are not just skills; they are ways of being. And now, as my TikTok feed fills with the sights and sounds of shepherds from Turkey, Kazakhstan, Arabia, Wales, China, Morocco, Scotland, Georgia, Spain and New Zealand—ShepherdTok, I call it—I find myself once again drawn into that world I once inhabited. A world I never really left.

Merino wethers crossing the Hakataramea Pass, Grampians Station, 1986.

So I’ve come back: not as a shepherd this time, but as a witness. A chronicler. A traveller with a dog whistle still hanging on a lanyard around my neck, a small token of a life once lived and never truly left behind.

I am not returning to muster sheep this time. I am coming back to gather up stories. I want to walk along the ridgelines of my memory, and the mountain paths and desert trails walked by other shepherds. I want to revisit my former life as a shepherd with the clarity that only age and distance can bring. I want to examine what I did in those far off days, who I was, and how being a shepherd shaped who I became.

But this journey is not mine alone. I want to explore the ancient world of shepherds; men and women who walked before me, crook in hand, through the pages of history and scripture. From the hills of Judea to the fells of Cumbria, from the Mesta trails of Spain to the steppes of Central Asia, shepherds have long stood as figures of resilience, watchfulness, and quiet authority.

And more than anything, I want to connect with shepherds across the world today. To hear their voices, learn their rhythms, and understand the land through their eyes. Whether herding flocks in the Atlas Mountains, minding ewes in the Pamirs, or watching over mobs in the Welsh hills, these men and women speak a language I still recognise: a language of wind, of silence, of movement, and care.

This is my return. Not to the fold, but to the field. To walk beside shepherds once more. Across cultures, across time, and across the great, weathered face of the Earth.

The author with a prize-winning merino ram, Grampians Station, 1985.