Cape Ann Climate Coalition’s Community Building and Education members at one of their first meetings.
Solving big problems, like meeting the challenges of climate change, requires us all to understand the current information and the ability to meet with one another to discuss ideas, and find solutions for our local needs. The Community Building and Education (CBE) Action Group helps to provide these opportunities.
We share information about climate science and policy, the CACC, and other local climate efforts through social media and video.
Preserve What We Love was a community roundtable where the writers of this project met with other Cape Ann community members to share their love of this island and ideas for solutions to the climate concerns.
“Preserve What We Love” is a powerful mantra that underscores the importance of safeguarding the people, places, and things that hold significant value in our lives. At its core, this concept encourages us to take proactive steps to protect the environment, culture, and relationships that enrich our existence. Whether it’s advocating for environmental conservation to ensure natural wonders endure for future generations, preserving cultural heritage to maintain a sense of identity and history, or nurturing the bonds with friends and family, this philosophy drives us to act with intention and responsibility. By recognizing what truly matters to us, we can focus our efforts on sustainability, legacy, and connection, ensuring that what we cherish today remains vibrant and accessible tomorrow.
Now It’s Time To Take Our Medicine
By Clayton Kern
Owner of North Shore Adventures
Bearskin Neck, Rockport
If you or anyone you know has had a cancer diagnosis, you know that to restore health often requires undergoing painful treatment. The treatment itself is challenging but necessary to help your body get healthy again. A large part of me feels that way towards our climate crisis and sea level rise.
25 years ago my mother had Hodgkins lymphoma cancer. Today she is alive and well because she was willing to give up a year of her life to undergo the chemotherapy that allows her to be alive today. When I see things like my very own storefront on Bearskin Neck flooded 5 times this winter after only 2 times in the last ten years, there’s no denying that something is out of balance that needs treatment. Our sea is rising fast, and our climate is changing equally fast. We are losing species around the world at lightning speed. ... (read the full essay here)
These Are Just Stories To Him; We Cannot Afford To Remain Passive
By Elin af Klinteberg
On this sweltering summer day, I find a quiet moment in my garden to sit, look around, and reflect on how much our environment has changed since I was a little girl.
My name is Elin af Klinteberg, and I hold deep pride in being part of the Gloucester community. It’s hard not to feel a mix of nostalgia and concern as I think about the significant transformations our beloved environment has experienced throughout my lifetime. As I share my childhood memories with my son, Elias, I can almost see the vibrant stories unfold. I remember those thrilling adventures we had in the cold winter months, scurrying down to Lanes Cove to run across the frozen “icebergs” or those sun-soaked summer days when we excitedly ran barefoot down to Plum Cove beach, diving into the refreshing embrace of the cold bay.... (read full essay here)
Where the Trees Remember Me
A Love Letter to Cape Ann’s Woods
By Harrison Schoenfarber
I’m not a scientist or a policy expert – I’m just someone who’s found healing in these woods. Over the past five years, the woods and waters of Cape Ann have been more than just a backdrop to my life – they’ve been part of the healing. In some of the hardest and most transformative seasons, the trails of Gloucester and Rockport have offered me space to breathe, to feel, to reconnect. This piece is both a personal reflection and a quiet call – a way to honor what these wild places have meant to me and to speak to why protecting them matters, now more than ever.
There are places that hold us before we even know we need holding. For me, Cape Ann has been that place. Not just for the salt air or the crashing tides, but for the stillness in the middle. The woods. The trails. The moss-covered stones that seem to whisper something true when the rest of the world feels too loud. Over these past five years – through heartbreak, grief, growth, and recovery – I’ve kept coming back to the forest. Not to run away from life, but to move more honestly through it...(read full essay here)
What the World Needs Now
Our individual efforts are necessary, but far from sufficient
by Holly Tanguay
I have had a lifelong love affair with the natural world. I grew up climbing the second or third-growth trees in my Midwestern urban yard while yearning for vast forests. I rode my bicycle to the bits of woods and water within reach while dreaming of mountains and adventure. For each of two summers, I spent a couple of weeks at a sleep-away camp in the Rockies. It was heaven. At dawn on a horse pack trip to a high, wild valley in Rocky Mountain National Park, I awoke early to greet the day alone. I had come home to the wild. I felt alive and full of gratitude.
(read full essay here)
Our Beloved Sea
By Osha Rose
I am someone who tends to focus on talking about what’s going right in the world, so it was unusual that I found myself attending a Cape Ann Climate Coalition roundtable to discuss the climate crisis on Cape Ann this spring.
I was moved by a story someone shared about our mussel beds deteriorating and the ripple effect this can have on our ocean’s ecosystem. The beaches are a huge part of how I live my days and what I love most about being here on Cape Ann.
I was reminded of the importance of educating myself on what can be done to help protect and preserve our waters. There is so much more that I can do, and at that roundtable, I listened to how others were acting in support of preserving what we love about this island. Since that meeting, I have researched and learned about what has been done, and what we can still do to help restore mussel beds in a natural way. But I have also become aware of how our actions affect the greater whole globally. For example, how many of us realize that the pollution we are putting in the streets—with our cars, our trash, and whatever we’re using to fertilize our lawns—will end up in the ocean?… (read the full essay here)
TEARS IN RAIN:
WILL CLIMATE CHANGE
CLAIM CAPE ANN?
by Robert Newton
“What if?” is the core question that seeds every
science fiction story. In Franklin Schaffner’s 1968 film “Planet Of The Apes,” it’s “What if humans were no longer the dominant species?”
In Richard Fleischer’s “Soylent Green” (1973), it’s “What if we killed the oceans and our overcrowded planet ran out of food?”
In Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982), it’s “What if androids became self-aware?”
When I think of a possible climate-changed future
for our beloved island community of Cape Ann, this last film comes to mind most of all.:... (read full essay here)
We Have All Heard
By Sarah Patey
We’ve all heard of it: “climate change,” “global warming.” These are some of the scariest buzzwords that carry with them images of droughts, fires, hurricanes, floods, and oil spills. These ideas can be hard and intimidating to process, however, we need to make a difference.
Understanding the climate crisis on an individual level can feel overwhelming and futile. When the majority of the media simultaneously puts the responsibility for all change on individuals, while telling us thinking change can truly happen is idealistic and naive: it can feel like we are fighting a losing battle. Even so, it is incredibly important for all of us to appreciate the climate crisis personally.
When we have knowledge, we have power.
We have the ability to recognize what our local, national, and global governments are doing in response to the climate crisis. Understanding arms us with words and actions, as well as insulating us from propaganda in the form of greenwashing. This is important because we live in a media-rich culture. When we get how sustainability actually works, and what is truly environmentally conscious, we can make change... (read the full essay)
WE CAN CONTRIBUTE to a RESILIENT FUTURE
Vanessa Hobbs + Terrence Attridge
Being able to call Cape Ann “home” is a daily practice of appreciation and gratitude. After many years of traveling and living across the country, I’ve convinced my Manchester-by-the-sea native partner, Terrence, to settle into my childhood neighborhood in the north woods of Lanesville. Truthfully, it was an easy sell; wild blueberries and huckleberries in the summer, walking distance to the ocean, adventuring on miles of trails through the Greenbelt, and the chance to build the fanciest chicken coop we could dream up.
Reflecting on my childhood in Lanesville, I spent most of my youngest years surrounded by artists, activists, builders, crafters, creators, historians, lobstermen and musicians. Each one was deeply rooted in their environment. Each one involved in preservation and community in their own way. Like many generations before us, Terrence and I are defining stewardship in a way that is closely tied to how our way of life influences climate change, and we are focused on identifying actionable and attainable steps to make a positive impact for our family and broader community... (read full essay here)
