On my first day in the State House, the building’s architecture had its intended effect. After two years of Zoom meetings, I was struck by the majesty of the place – the sense of importance, history and work that matters. I was awed by the busyness, the urgency and even the chaos.

These are my last months serving as State Senator for District 30, my home. I leave having grown tremendously, with a few reflections I want to share.

If the Senate Chamber was built to inspire grandeur, it still does. But it does not match the beauty of the woods behind my home. Some of my best thinking and work were born from walks along humble brooks and red maple stands with colleagues, neighbors and my dog.

Architecture often reinforces power. High ceilings and raised benches make us feel small and the institution feel eternal. But the deepest kind of wisdom I know doesn’t live in hierarchy. It lives in something more horizontal. More ecological.

I often find myself trying to reconcile the grandeur of the State House with the quieter, older wisdom of the natural world. There was a time when those two things weren’t so far apart – when democracy happened outside, in fields and on hillsides and along the edges of forests. People gathered close to the systems that sustained them and made decisions with that reality in full view.
Serving on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where we debate blasting the earth, damming rivers and polluting soil, I’ve often wished that nature had a seat at the table. If we did this work outside, nature wouldn’t just have a seat. It would be the table. And I wonder, would we make the same decisions if we felt the wind on our faces, if we sat beneath a wide oak, if we could hear the water moving beside us?

The closer we are to our communities and to the natural world we depend on, the more grounded and conscientious our decisions become. As a midwife, I learned to follow a process I could not control and to hold deep respect for life unfolding. As a farmer, I learned to work with the seasons and to collaborate with forces bigger than myself. Both of those stories have shaped the leader I’ve tried to be in the Legislature.

I’ll soon step away from the State House with immense pride in the work my colleagues and I have accomplished in its chambers. Each day brought fraught debate and thoughtful conversation. Disappointments and victories, small and large, and stubbornly nonlinear. I leave with confidence that, over my six years of service, the sum of all these moments was real progress for Maine – for its people, its nature, its values and the resilient web that connects them all through times as challenging as these.

It goes without saying that there is no shortage of work left to do. I step away from the Legislature not to stop the work, but to change the setting. Nature will be my table, where neighbors come together to build something much larger than any one of us alone. I hope you’ll join me there.

Through the fall, you can connect with me at Stacy.Brenner@legislature.maine.gov or (207) 287-1515. And thereafter, I hope to see you in the woods at Broadturn Farm. I am always here to help, as your senator for now and your neighbor for good.