[Photo: Brooksdale's wetland, taken by Noah J. Guthrie.]
We are saturated with bad news. This is true for just about any of us, whether we follow politics, social justice issues, pandemic reports, or modern pop music, but this constant flow of negative messaging (as well as the emotional weight that comes with it), is a common experience for environmentalists. Off the top of my head, I could probably rattle off a couple dozen environmental problems: climate change, degraded topsoil, zoonotic disease, air pollution, microplastics, mass extinction, flooding… The list can roll on and on. Beyond that, our chances of solving these problems often seem slim, and it can be hard to motivate ourselves to keep trying.
Still, there are reasons to take hope for the environment, and one of the things that I find most encouraging is taking notice of others’ successes. Because of that, I wanted to use this essay to draw light to one specific community that’s done well in protecting and nurturing the earth: the Brooksdale Environmental Centre, a project in Surrey, British Columbia. Of course, this one community’s success doesn’t solve the myriad problems that face the environment, but it’s a step in that direction, and if we’re to take our own steps, it’s well worth our time to acknowledge and draw inspiration from such examples. I hope that by sharing about this community, I may provide my readers (and myself) with a little bit of courage, so that we may persist in our own struggles for the natural world.
I came to Brooksdale in the fall of 2018. I’d nursed a passion for nature since I was at least five years old, but I still didn’t have much experience in actively caring for the earth. So after high school, I decided to spend part of my gap year at Brooksdale as a conservation science intern. I flew over there in September, and I moved into a house called Hazelmere with eleven other interns, living just across from the main Centre.
Brooksdale is a sparse collection of houses surrounded by wetland and forest. The houses are set on a hill, built in a classic, rural style with white walls and brown crossbeams. The wetland is in the valley below, and on the hillside, a crescent of maples and Douglas firs curls along one side of the houses, then sweeps away in a wide arc. During my time there, Brooksdale’s education team would lead school groups through the closer parts of the forest, while the more distant portions were frequented by the conservation science team (my group), where we counted chickadees and brown creepers. In addition to the bird surveys, the conservation science team would plant trees, chop up invasive blackberry, and research local creatures such as frogs, bats, and the endangered Salish sucker. Both the research and the planting would help restore natural landscapes.
I’m pretty sure that Brooksdale’s organic farm circulates between fields, but that fall, a yellow, moss-roofed barn marked where the agriculture team harvested their produce. From September through November, they gathered carrots, kohlrabi, and chard, gritty parsnips, slick jalapeños, and an absolute flood of winter squash. Many of these crops would go to locals or to restaurants in Vancouver, while what remained went to Brooksdale’s guest house. The guest house was where we cooked meals. Many of Brooksdale’s staff lived on site, so we took turns cooking lunch and dinner for one another, for students, and for any other guests who visited. After lunch on Thursdays, we’d divide up chores, then have dessert and worship afterward, where Ruth (one of the education staff) would play guitar. We went through a pamphlet of reflective, cyclical hymns together, some of which I still sing today.
All of that may sound a bit idyllic, so it’s worth saying that earth-care will look different in, say, a suburb or city than it did at Brooksdale. It certainly looks different for me now than it did then. Still, this little spot in British Columbia displays a wonderful set of environmental values that can offer hope and direction for environmentalists anywhere.
One of these values is cultivating an intimate relationship with nature. Having an intellectual bent, it was good for me to develop a more physical connection to the earth. I planted dogwoods, wrestled Himalayan blackberry, cooked produce, and walked through a wetland (where I scared a lot of frogs and herons) to go to work each day. When I walked through that wetland, I liked to stop at the bridge and look down into the Tatalu River. I’d just stand there, listening to the water run, while its current flashed like spider silk. Later that fall, I’d be able to see the salmon slicing their way upriver.
My love for this specific place, with its specific creatures, strengthened my love for “nature” as a whole, in the same way that my love for a neighbor or friend strengthens my love for “humanity” as a whole. When compassion is limited to an abstract concept, it’s often weak and inactive. To claim to love “the environment,” but then to never care for it with my own hands, would be both tragic and hypocritical. At Brooksdale, however, I came to the point where I wanted nature to thrive not just for the ideal of “sustainability,” but for the Tatalu, for the deer ferns, the shaggy parasol mushrooms, the salmon, and the kingfishers that veered over the wetland with their salvo of trills.
Brooksdale encouraged this engagement with nature for all who worked there. Nature is where we taught, researched, harvested, and lived, and we invited visitors to experience that as well. For instance, the education team would often lead school groups down to the wetland, where they’d pull up traps filled with sunfish, crawdads, sticklebacks, and the occasional bullfrog. (They would release the non-invasive species afterward.) This allowed the children to see, touch, and fully experience the natural world, an engagement that would (hopefully) plant the seeds for a growing zeal and compassion for the earth.
As well as cultivating greater love for the environment, this love for the specific in nature is simply what nature deserves. Though there isn’t room for a full argument in this essay, I believe that nature has inherent value regardless of whether it benefits us. Since God created nature and called it “good,” even before human beings existed, nature deserves to be loved for its own sake. (There are other justifications for inherent value as well, some of them secular, but this is the one that I hold to.) I realize that some won’t find that idea helpful. Even without the idea of inherent value, though, there’s still plenty of reason to care for the environment, because our fates are linked. When we care for nature, it cares for us.
That leads me to the next aspect of Brooksdale that I admire: it displays a relationship of mutual thriving, in which both nature and humanity benefit. To some extent, this is true of all of Brooksdale’s work, but it may be clearest in their organic farm.
Everyone needs food to live, and in order to get food, we need healthy soil, as well as the billions of fungi, bacteria, and insects that contribute to that health. So, if we farm in a way that degrades the soil (as is the case with most industrial farming), we’re gradually depleting a resource vital to our own survival. Those at Brooksdale, however, strive to raise crops in a way that maintains the soil’s health (e.g. by not using pesticides), so theoretically, that soil will remain healthy and fruitful for generations to come.
In fact, if anything, the Brooksdale farm is too fruitful. During my time there, our soil erupted with more winter squash than any of us knew what to do with, so even after weeks of squash curries, chilies, and purées, we had to host a “Pumpkin and Prose Soiree” with all manner of squash-based desserts just to work through it all. Lack of food was the least of our problems.
In short, by farming in a way that maintains the life of the soil, Brooksdale shows how human beings can live in harmony with nature, each giving place to the other, and each caring for the other’s health and well-being. Though earth-care sometimes requires personal change and sacrifice, it’s ultimately a joyful mission, because as we address the needs of nature, we multiply our own happiness and welfare.
Another reason that Brooksdale gives me hope is that it models how to take the role of a learner in restoring ecosystems. Good intentions for the natural world must be paired with a learner’s mindset. If we don’t observe nature, research it, and learn how it’s meant to function, we will inevitably make mistakes in how we try to heal it. This is why research is so important for Brooksdale’s restoration projects.
As a striking example of this, our wetland itself is a restoration project designed by one of the staff at Brooksdale. One of my supervisors, Jesse, used his knowledge of how wetland ecosystems work in order to create his own. He excavated, channeled water, planted trees, and even found strategic spots to place fallen logs (which is important for watery ecosystems). Today, Brooksdale’s wetland is home to a growing population of twinberry, dogwood, fish, frogs, and great blue herons.
When we carry out these kinds of projects, it’s important that we work with natural processes, and not against them. If we fail to do that, we create fragile ecosystems that require human input to survive. However, if we observe natural processes and see how they work, we can learn how to best support and restore them, sometimes even initiating them (as Jesse did), thus creating structures that empower ecosystems to sustain themselves.
Throughout this essay so far, I’ve explored three of Brooksdale’s environmental values: cultivating a close relationship with nature, seeking mutual thriving with it, and taking the role of a learner in restoring it. Seeing those at Brooksdale hold true to these values in their own corner of the world gives me encouragement for the preservation and thriving of our environment as a whole.
For my last point, though, I wanted to explore where the people at Brooksdale draw their own sense of hope. Since the project is part of a Christian organization (A Rocha International), many of the staff there are inspired and motivated by their faith. They believe that God created the earth and its creatures, that He called them “good,” and that He tasked human beings with caring for it. From their viewpoint, the call to “work” and “keep” the natural world was one of the original purposes of humanity (Genesis 2.15, English Standard Version).
Some view Christianity as ignoring the needs of the physical world, having an “otherworldly” focus, but a central aspect of Jesus’ Kingdom (to be established “on earth as it is in heaven”) is the restoration of the material world, as is evident in His taking on a physical body and having it resurrected (Matthew 6.10). In this way, Jesus redeemed the human body and ensured its preservation. Beyond that, God’s healing of the physical world extends to nature as a whole. The apostle Paul asserts that Jesus’ mission is “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,” which means, in part, that “creation itself will be set free” (Colossians 1.20, Romans 8.22).
This is far from a comprehensive argument for Christian earth-care, but hopefully, it gives some explanation for why those at Brooksdale work, and what they work towards. Those at Brooksdale see their faith as an invitation to join God in redeeming nature from our ethical and socio-economic failures, so that we may progress into a relationship of mutual thriving with the earth. I believe that this perspective brings a lot of hope. If God works alongside us to restore nature, then we can face environmental issues that seem (even from the most optimistic reports) insurmountable. Even in situations like climate change, where we’re fighting against incredible odds, and with very little time to act, we know that God won’t rest until the created world is restored. And if God won’t rest, we won’t rest, either.
So, among other reasons, I admire those at the Brooksdale Environmental Centre for embracing this holy call, cultivating a relationship with nature characterized by intimacy, mutual thriving, and learning. Though our planet is rife with wounds, and its future sometimes looks bleak, I believe that it’s encouraging to know that anyone, anywhere, is living in a way that protects and nurtures the earth. If there’s any place where compassion for nature still exists, there’s hope that it can deepen its roots, grow, and spread its boughs over the whole globe. The path to that future is still open, and that’s what we all strive for.