REDISCOVERING REINDEER

“IT'S NOT REALLY THAT COLD,” I muse while pulling on snow pants and a waterproof jacket.

- SARAH A.BOWEN

SARAH A.BOWEN is the executive director of the Animal Chaplaincy Training program at Compassion Consortium and author of Sacred Sendoffs. Visit sarahabowen.​com.

“Yes, it is, Sarah,” my husband replies. As if on cue, the sharp winds of the Scottish Highlands hit my face.

“But it’s not as cold as the North Pole!” I add, almost conceding defeat.

Once braced for the weather, we slosh through the Cairngorms National Park, technicolored lichen and mosses of the bogland underneath our feet. Together with a small group, we seek the only free-ranging herd of reindeer in the United Kingdom, a herd whose ancestors were brought to Scotland in the 1950s by Mikel Utsi, a Sámi herder from Sweden, and his wife, anthropologist Ethel Lindgren, Ph.D. The Sámi of northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula have lived closely with the species for more than 5,000 years. After his honeymoon visit to the Cairngorms, Utsi believed that reindeer once roamed there but had vanished due to hunting and climate change. In response, he helped transplant eight reindeer to the Highlands, creating a herd that now numbers about 150.