Sarah Brooks

Executive Director, Methow Conservancy

Winthrop, WA

8/20/22

Snowy Tree Crickets provide a sound track to the perfectly rehearsed performance of night falling over the Methow Valley. As the sky deepens and stars flicker on, squinted eyes turn to headlamps and Sarah Brooks welcomes Semester in the West to the Methow. Sarah is the Executive Director of the Methow Valley Land Trust. She was the first non-scientist hired to the organization, and it is obvious why. Her ideologies of community and collective support are deeply aligned with scientific views of ecological restoration. In her welcome she asks us to consider the question, “What’s your responsibility as a human when you love a place?” Sarah exudes love for the Methow, where she has lived and worked for the last 18 years. Her answer to this question is found in the mission statement of the Land Trust: “to inspire people to care for the land.” Sarah extends this by explaining that it is also our responsibility to care for the people who care for the land.

As we sink into camp chairs molded by generations of Westies, Sarah encourages us to “lean into the complexity required to study environmental issues.” This complexity forces Sarah to grapple with her position as a white settler as she works to integrate a process of reconciliation with the Methow people into the work of the Land Trust. Contradictory to a long history and tradition of conservation as exclusionary to indigenous peoples, building a relationship with the Methow people in which they can collaborate as stewards of the land is absolutely essential to Sarah and the Land Trust. The project Sarah is most proud of in her 18 years working for the Land Trust is the return of 320 acres the Methow Tribe. This is only the start. She tells us that building this collaboration she so deeply believes in will take time, dedication, and humility. This relationship must be fostered “at the speed of trust.”

By Mosley Lerner