Rooted in Nature: Sarah Giffen Carr on Conservation, Maine, and Meaning

Today we have with us Sarah Giffen-Carr, who is the former co-executive director of conservation at the Midcoast Conservancy. Thanks for coming in today. Sarah Griffen-Thank you so much. So I'm loving so many things about what you and I were talking about before we came on the air, but let's go all the way back. Let's go all the way back to little Sarah being raised in Hallowell and Chelsea in Maine, for people who weren't from Maine and being intrigued by the broader world, the woods and the outdoors, what were your initial touch points into the environment? Sarah Griffen-So I grew up in a very outdoorsy family. We spent every weekend out hiking or cross country skiing or ice skating, and we spent the school year in Hallowell. And then we spent our summers on a piece of property that my parents first bought when they were first married in Chelsea. And my dad builds a cabin there and we didn't have running water or electricity and we spent the entire summer there cooking on a Coleman stove and living out of a cooler. And I think that in retrospect, when you're living it, you just think this is normal and everyone does this. In retrospect, that was incredibly formative for me to just be removed from all manmade sounds and to be immersed in the natural landscape and not have things to amuse me or take up my time other than interacting with the world around me. Sarah Griffen-It was just really impactful. We had a huge vegetable garden, spent our days working in the garden, planting trees, walking through the woods, rescuing salamanders, climbing in tree stands that my dad had built because my dad is also a hunter. And just that connection to place and being deeply rooted somewhere and the natural cycles around you. I remember every end of the summer, beginning of fall when we would move back to Hallowell in our house there for the school year and just being sort of blown away by the noises. And Hallowell isn't exactly a big city, but just the noises of the street and all the sounds shifted and the air moved differently. It was hotter and just feeling really grateful that I had that experience growing up. And my dad is a forester, so he was always talking to my brother and I about different natural world topics like forestry or animals or the last glacial period and marks on rocks and how this is when the glacier went over. And so I just grew up sort of immersed in that and it was a really, really powerful force in my life. And when I went off to university, I studied geography and environmental science. And then as I entered my early adulthood, I wondered, is this really me or is this just my father's influence on me? Sometimes that can be hard to separate. And I think recently in particular I've realized, no, this was really me. My father was the catalyst for this and ignited this love, but the love is now truly mine. You're talking about something that I can relate to because my father was a doctor, I then became a doctor and I too have had to come to this place of is it just because there's a lineage and because there's an early exposure and it's the family business. We had a lot of doctors in our family and what I have come to full circle has now been - absolutely there are things about medicine and about story catching and about being part of people's narratives that I've always been deeply attuned to. But first, you're right, you have to find a way through the noise and through the sort of familial enculturation. That's an interesting process, isn't it? Sarah Griffen-It is. And I think it continues to strike me as I get older. So my mom was a nurse and I had thought in my choice, well, maybe I should have gone into medicine. Maybe that would've been where my heart lies. And it's only recently where I feel like, no, I really am on the path that I was supposed to be on. I was at my dad's property in Chelsea, which is a property I grew up on the other day, and it was evening and I was walking down through the field to shut a gate. And I just felt like this incredible sense of being home deep in your soul, not just like, oh, this is where I grew up, but this is like home. I live in Brunswick now with my family and Brunswick has some sort of wilder spaces, but I wouldn't really say it has anywhere that feels truly wild to me. Sarah Griffen-And I have this sense of feeling like, oh, I love Brunswick for many reasons, and that's where we're raising our family and we're attached there. But there's a sense that I have now being there that I'm disconnected from some that are pretty important to me, like the natural world. And when I'm at my father's house, his property abutts up on 6,000 acres of contiguous forest. I can feel that sense of connection and that's getting that feeling of that need to be connected to the natural world is getting stronger and stronger in me as I get older. To the point now where even my house in Brunswick where we have a fair amount of land and we have a horse and chickens and apple trees, it doesn't have the same sense of connection for me and it leaves me feeling a little bit untethered in a way that my going to my dad's house does not. It's interesting to hear you talk about this sort of experiential aspect of self that has drawn you toward conservation and toward geology because you also simultaneously have this very academic, very organizational side of you that understands things in parallel in a different way. So you studied environmental science and geography at McGill. You also worked for organizations like the US Geological Survey and also Maine's Land Use Planning Commission. So you've sort of touched upon the environment from lots of different aspects, but when asked this question, you really talk about this very personal connection. It's not through the intellectualization that you remain fascinated with this. It's very personal. It's very emotional. Sarah Griffen-Would you say that's true? Sarah Griffen-Yeah, I would. Yep. And I think that's pretty neat, right? To be able to marry your professional and career goals with a deep personal love and understanding the meaning behind places and ultimately, hopefully that makes you better at what you're doing and able to accomplish more. So for example, in the land trust world where people are coming to a land trust and either donating their property or giving an easement on their property, understanding the emotions behind connection to place and what a gift that is for someone to give up singular control of their property is huge. And if you can come at that with that understanding, it creates empathy and that in turn creates trust. And hopefully you can accomplish more. I mean, so to be able to put yourself in the landowner's shoes and understand how on some levels it must be very scary to put an easement on your property because you're now connected to a land trust for the remainder of your life in your intimate personal relationship with your property, that that's huge. And I just think being able to understand multiple perspectives is really important. And most people have some deep rooted sense of place and connection to place, whatever that is, whether it's the streets of New York City or the north Maine woods, we all have a sense of place and it's pretty important and it's a powerful force in people's lives. One of the sources of inspiration that you cite is Sand County Almanac Leopold. And I've also read this book and it's very powerful. And having read other books, this book and others like it, I always feel somehow that I can relate to this, that somebody's taken the time to write about their experience and to write about. It's not a character driven experience, it's poetic, but it's also very specific. It's prosaic. And I think that that kind of energetic connection is sometimes hard to put into words. So I appreciate that he was able to do this, and I also appreciate that you quoted this as a source of inspiration. So tell me about that. Sarah Griffen-Yeah, so my dad gave me the Sand County Almanac when I was in my twenties, and I read it and I just fell in love with it. And like you said, it's written so simply, but yet it has this deep sense of awe and wonder and inquisitiveness about the natural world. And that just made such an impression on me, and I've read it a dozen times. I think the chapters to me are almost meditative. And you can pick the book up and you can turn to any chapter. You don't have to read it in order, you don't have to read it all the way through. You can read chapter five or you can read chapter one. And it's sort of like a meditation on just simple rhythms. And I think for me, it also highlights how in our daily lives we're pretty disconnected from the natural rhythms around us. Sarah Griffen-I mean for various people to varying degrees. But even for me in my busy life, do you stop to notice the comings and goings of the world and the animals and the trees around you? Are you paying attention? And fundamentally, our modern human world, we've really disconnected ourselves from the world around us. And to reconnect creates - means you have to have some intention about doing it or it's just not going to happen. And I guess for me, my sort of spiritual existence is that connection to the natural world and the rhythms and that sense of meaning. And so his book is just the example of that, right? And it's quirky. And one of the chapters, if I remember correctly, is following a skunk, and it's childlike in that way. He's this really well thought of professor and researcher, and he'll spend the day just following a skunk, a skunks tracks and being inquisitive about why is it going here and what's happening now. And it's really interesting from that perspective. It is interesting as you're talking about reconnecting with rhythms and reconnecting with the environment because, I go out walking and running every day. We live on a Maine island and it's connected by causeway and by bridge to the mainland. So every day there's something new every day I'm looking, and it's whatever the season is, there's something that's new to catch my eye that I've probably seen before. There's a kingfisher that always appears the same time every year. I think it's in June over the little John Island Causeway every, I'm sure it's not the same one, but maybe who knows. But every year it kind of keeps me touching back to nature. And yet it's so easy to not notice that it's so easy to get caught up in whatever else is in front of you. And in your case, you have three children who are at a very busy stage of their lives. And so that continual push pull of where do I put my energy? The quote, "That's how we spend our days is how we spend our lives." And so for you, how do you make decisions about being intentional and living in a way that keeps you connected with your father's forested land in Chelsea or the ocean or whatever it is that keeps you grounded in this thing that you feel so passionate about? Sarah Griffen-It's hard. I mean, because there are so many forces on us, and to decide how you're going to live your life in a way that suits you is not an easy thing. So there are some things that I've constructed where you kind of have to almost make rules around them so that they actually happen. So my family has a loose rule. I won't call it like a rule that just sounds so dictatorial, but that we spend a day every weekend outside doing something together, whether it's hiking or canoeing or ice skating or picking fiddleheads in the spring and having that rhythm is so important to me. And that means that you forego other things, right? Your kid's not available for a play date on that day, or you're not going to that extra soccer game on that day because you have this other commitment. That's something that I sort of came to my family with without even knowing it because I grew up that way and knowing that that was a rhythm in my family, like a rhythm of going to church for some families, that was my family's thing, and it was pretty different. Sarah Griffen-I didn't know any other families doing that and recreating that with my kids has been so important to me because when we're around home, you are distracted, your energy is going in different directions, there are chores to do and there's different incoming demands. And when we go spend a day in the woods together, all we have to do is walk down the path and talk and notice and create. So creating structure around that has been super important to me. And in other areas of my life, I don't know. I feel like I'm losing that battle sometimes when you're going for a walk and you talk about noticing the kingfisher, how many times am I on a walk and I'm just not really present. I'm problem solving if I have this thing coming up or that thing coming up. So being present is sort of an ongoing challenge in ours, particularly in our modern society where we have so many demands on us. Sarah Griffen-You go for a walk and you take your cell phone with you. I mean, do you remember the days when you went for a walk and we didn't have cell phones and you were completely present? Now you can say, oh, I think I can check my calendar for a second, or I can make this call and then I'll be getting more done. I'll be walking and getting an appointment scheduled. So I just think that's an ongoing challenge in everyone's life of how to create space and how to be intentional. And one way we've done that in our family is we have a day a week when all we're doing is being together outside. I think that's really important, what you've said about structure and rules and that it is so easy to get pulled off balance. And so often what I hear from people is they feel like they're powerless in the face of these larger things. And it is true there is a huge draw because there is a connectivity that happens as a result of being in the digital space, And I think many of us feel like we benefit from that. But then how do you continue to foster the non-digital connectivity? And how do you say, okay, here is when we're going to do this one thing on this side, but here is where we're going to do this thing on this other side, and how do you continue to make space like literal space as important as it is? Because when you start building out structures, you start putting condo units on wetlands, which hopefully doesn't happen, but I mean, if you start paving over all of the fields and all of the forests, then all of nature is kind of move to the edges. So obviously we need places for people to live and places to go buy our groceries, and we also need places for us to go back to where there is nobody living and to bring our children and to go for walks and runs. So for you, this interest in land trust and conservation, it seems like a way to kind of continue to build structures around preserving the sacredness. Sarah Griffen-Yeah, I think that you can approach conservation from so many different sides. You're right, we all need places to live. And so one side is proactive identification of where development is most appropriate, and that can be done at the town level through comprehensive planning. Or when I worked for the Maine Land Use Planning Commission, that was done through state government of identifying what areas are most appropriate for development and what areas aren't. Maine is growing at a rapid rate and something like 77% of the growth is happening outside of historic hubs. So I think in a 20 year span, I think it was from 1980 to 2000, we converted from field or forest to development something acreage size along the lines of Rhode Island, really big areas and pieces of land. And so having conservation on the one side, whether that's done through land trusts or by other means to identify what areas are best suited to remain in a natural state, whether it's for ecological reasons, habitat, carbon storage, giving us places to go and experience nature. Sarah Griffen-And then on the flip side, identifying areas where we should be developing so that we don't end up with a dispersed landscape where we've just fragmented all of the habitat and we lose all of those values. I mean, so many people come to Maine because they love the natural landscape, but the downside of that is then you end up fragmenting that landscape if you're not planning for development and conservation. Well, and that's been the story all up and down the eastern seaboard and Maine has really been the anomaly to that story until recently. I mean, we still have huge unfragmented blocks of forest land, 10.5 million acres in Northern Maine, and it is this huge, important intact habitat. And I don't think we always realize what a value that is and how unique it is, at least on the east coast of the United States. And to think that we're just somehow not going to be the rest of the country or the world and lose our forest and have increasing fragmentation without forward thinking and planning is just naive. We have to conserve it because we see its value, and we have to be proactive about that. And not viewing it as conservation versus development, but viewing it as how do we do both of these things in a thoughtful way? And I think that is really important because it often does become a point of friction when you have someone who has land, perhaps it's land that's been in the family for a long time, and maybe they need to pay off the taxes on the land, and they're like, well, I'm going to sell it to this developer because I can make a lot of money, versus maybe another choice would be I'm going to gift it to a land trust, but that's not going to give them the same financial gain. And everybody values things slightly differently. So trying to find a way to remain in conversation with the different viewpoints is incredibly important, but very challenging. Very. So how do you navigate those extremely different viewpoints? Sarah Griffen-Well, I think there's always going to be tension between private and public interest. That's an ongoing conversation, and I think remaining open to different perspectives is really important. When I was working at the Land Use Planning Commission, there was sort of an "aha" moment for me about big landowners in Northern Maine and their somewhat adverse reactions to trails and the placement of trails in some conversation that we were having. And they took the time to explain to me that when they allow the Appalachian Trail to grow across their property way back, that that was a gift. And then it became a federally recognized trail, and it has, I can never remember how many foot buffer on either side of the trail where you're not allowed to do, it's like 50 to a hundred feet. I think the whole corridor is a hundred feet wide, so it's 50 feet on either side of the trail because it became a federally recognized and protected trail. Sarah Griffen-Landowners lost the ability to do any forest management within that buffer or to cross the trail. And so that became a very real hardship for them in cases. So just understanding different points of view and how things have different implications for different people and that those are real and different points are of value. And so I think as you navigate that sort of tension between private and public interest remaining open, knowing that you don't know everything and that every one comes to the table with different really valuable perspectives is so important. And I think a lot of time in the environmental community, that doesn't always happen, that you have people sort of polarized on other side of private property rights versus environmental causes and them viewing each other with suspicion. And I think it's really important to understand that we all within ourselves hold those differing perspectives whether we're willing to admit it or not. If you're a private property owner, you understand what that means to you. And if you're an environmentalist, you understand what that means to you. And so trying to find win-win solutions to really complicated problems and remaining open and curious is really important. Not every person that comes in to talk with me brings lots of information. You've got lots of information, but I think what it represents is really your deep love and respect for what we have here in Maine, that we have something that's incredibly special, including this large northern Maine forest that is quite unique. So what is it about Maine that we should recognize as being really integral to saving? Sarah Griffen-I think that we have a huge intact forest, and then all of the value that comes from that, and that what we have in Maine is unique on a regional, and in some cases a global scale. The Sheepcott river in Midcoast, Maine has the southern most genetically distinct population of Atlantic salmon in the world. And as we look at climate change, the fact that these fish are existing at the southern end in a warmer climate, that they may have some genetic material that's going to be useful as we continue to have more climate change in the future. So I think just being aware of the resources that we have here and how important they are, how unique they are, how important they are, and how they're part of the key to a sustainable future is really important. There's one statistic, and I'm probably not going to get it right, but we have stocking levels in the Maine woods in the forest, and that's the amount of timber per acre. Sarah Griffen-And with better forest management, we could increase the stocking in the Maine forest to an extent that would be equivalent to taking a million cars off the road for a hundred years in terms of the forest's ability to increase its carbon storage. So just recognizing the resources that we have and the role that they can play in solutions to biodiversity, climate change is so important, but also looking at it from an economic perspective. And there's another study that every dollar spent on conservation in Maine adds $11 to our economy. So whether that's through forest products or tourism or hunting and fishing, just recognizing I think it's important to look at things not just from the pure environmental perspective of love of the natural world, but also to be able to look at it from the reality that we live in an economy and that to protect things, we really need to figure out how to do that and have it make economic sense and to find win-win solutions. Is there a way to pay forest landowners for carbon storage so that we're having a positive economic impact on landowners and we're also helping the environment? I love that point because I think sometimes what happens is people are, they're arguing in ways that the other side is not able to cure. And I know people who unquote "come on the liberal side" or or environmentalists are often coming in with this emotional kind of call to action, and then people on the business side or at this is what this sort of biases has taught us over time. On the business side, it's all financial. So you're not even talking about the same thing, you're not using the same language, you're not talking about equal value because how do you put a dollar amount on somebody's attachment to a stream? So what you're talking about is let's create some sort of a dialogue that acknowledges that there's a different language being used, and how do we cross that over? Sarah Griffen-How do you marry those things? I mean, it's already being done in places where the Auburn Water District spends a certain amount of money. It's a big amount per year conserving land around Lake Auburn, which is their source of water because it's cheaper than the filtration system that you would need to put in if that lake degrades. And so I think that a lot of the keys to these complex problems is finding that nexus between conservation for conservation's sake and conservation because it makes economic sense that we're better off economically if we're paying attention to conservation. And there's just more and more building research and evidence on those connections. And so yeah, moving the dialogue away from these entrenched camps and finding the areas where there's overlap and common ground is really important. One thing I was struck by in reading through the materials that you provided for us ahead of time is that you and I have a commonality that's perhaps not one that either one of us welcomed that my father, who I've already mentioned, he passed away, your mother passed away. And I know for me that has caused, as I've already described this, need to go back and really understand my own identity as a person versus the identity that I sort of drew from my father. But also for me, it's been this time of really trying to touch back into what's important to me and whatever amount of life I have left. So I'm wondering what this process has been like for you having lost your mother. Sarah Griffen-Yeah, it's a huge awakening in some ways. So my mom, if you talk about romantic soulmates, I feel like my mom, my mother and I were the mother daughter version of soulmates, very different, but our connection was super deep and meaningful and spiritual. So losing my mom was one of those things that I felt like I could imagine it in the future and think to myself, I would not be able to survive that. And then losing my mom, you have no choice and you figure out how to survive it. And it's definitely led me on some different spiritual journeys, one of them being digging into my ancestry and our attachment to the male side of our family, even through the passing down of your family name. So I grew up being told my maiden name is Giffen, and that's a Scottish name being told I was Scottish and I did Ancestry. Sarah Griffen-And it turns out I'm 4% Scottish and I'm mostly Scandinavian, which was like "look in the mirror" shocking. But that was the first occurrence that through the female sides of my family, I'm mostly Swedish. And so just this sort of what is your identity and how much of that is coming from what you're told versus what you are, and the powerful stories of women in our life can get lost. Even doing my own sort of family research, it's very hard to trace women back in time. It's pretty easy to trace men through different records and similar names. Your name stays the same and all of that. So in the practical sense, it took me down that journey in a deeper sense. It took me down this journey of really in a deep level understanding that our time on this planet is limited and what do I want my time to look like? So it ignited some passions in me that weren't there before of just what are the things I want to experience? What are the things I want to see? What are the things I want to do in the time that I have left? I have to be careful to temper that with not going too far too fast and remembering to just slow down and doing nothing is also doing something. And after my mom died, it was a little hard for me to find that balance. Sarah Griffen-But yeah, I think that we all go through that at some point, the grief process, that's part of life. And I felt like my stepping through it and I was in my thirties was this big veil being lifted that if you haven't lost anyone super close to you, you're sort of living in a fantasy land and that the first time you experience deep gut wrenching loss, it's like a veil gets lifted and there's this whole other part of life that you've now seen and becomes part of who you are. And it's a great humanizer, right? It's a huge part of the human experience. Sarah Griffen-So living through that can't help but to change you and to connect you to other people. I view other people's loss completely differently now in terms of my ability on some level to be able to relate and empathize. That has just completely shifted. But yeah, I feel like particularly as I enter my fifties and not having my mom around, I have sort of a new found passion for learning at a deeper level than I had before, just for its own pure joy. As we go through school, we learn because we have to. It's all externally put on us. And I just feel this shift of internal of what do I want? What do I want to learn? Just because I want to learn it, not because it's necessarily useful or someone might ask me if I know about this in the future. That's been really interesting for me. For me, what I can relate to is, it's a fascinating thing to know that everybody is going to lose somebody dear to them, every single person. And yet, when it happens to you, it is the most painful thing that you can't imagine other people are walking around with this pain. How do people go on living after dealing with this pain? And yet every single person does this. So it is interesting that we've normalized it to such a great degree that it's like, oh, well, you lost your father. Yeah, fathers die. That's the way it goes. He was old. What's the big deal? It's like, well, sure, it doesn't matter how old somebody is if you lose them and you cared about them, that that loss exists. So that for me is very relatable. But I also find it, for me personally, there were so many things that just being at the stage of my life that I'm at now, that I kept learning stuff. And then I kept seeing how things were not actually applied. And I'm like, oh, all right. Well, I've now done it and thought about it the way that everybody else said to, yeah, maybe it worked, maybe it didn't. Now I can make my own decisions. I am just not as likely to listen to what other people say and accept it as being true anymore. And some of that is that lifting of the veil, right? Sarah Griffen-I think it's the lifting of the veil. I also think that some of that is aging. Sure. Yes. Sarah Griffen-And just without even realizing it, gaining more confidence in who are, I don't even know if it's confidence or if it's just this lack of caring about needing whatever it is for you personally to be approved of by other people or to fit or to have a distinct path that you're following. I definitely feel like pieces of that are lifting for me as well, of just finding your own inner guide, compass bliss, whatever it is, and not being as afraid to follow it, even if it's sort of counterculture or.. So for you, the future has opened up. Sarah Griffen-And I know you mentioned that you had learned about this kind of unexpected and deep interest in land trust, and you're kind of letting things settle right now. Sarah Griffen-I am letting things settle a little bit, just figuring out what I want my next step to be. And I think I was thinking about this as we start on our career. We think of a path, I know this is going to sound really cliche. We just think of our career path. I no longer think about a path. I just think about what's the next thing I can do that's going to be satisfying to me, that is useful to the world or my little area of the world? Where can I be of use in a way that's satisfying to me, where I'm learning something, where I'm being supported and challenged and being more open to not necessarily having a prescribed idea of exactly what that looks like, just being more open. And does it involve going back to school in some way? Right now, I've been thinking ting with that idea and what skills do I want? What have I experienced and what have I not experienced? And I definitely love the land trust work. I just love the ability to be creative, collaborative. It's all about relationship and building relationships with people, which is what we were talking about before, about being