Diverse themes highlighted at 2022 Trails and Sails

Sep. 14—This year's Trails and Sails events have an added sense of purpose.

Since the program was introduced 21 years ago, Trails and Sails has featured free tours, hikes and presentations at historic, cultural and natural sites all over Essex County. Until recently, these were held on successive weekends. But since 2019, Trails and Sails has lasted 10 straight days, and this year is running from this Friday, Sept. 16, through Sunday, Sept. 25.

But Trails and Sails 2022 is also highlighting four themes that are addressed by roughly a third of the 150 programs on offer, all of which can be reviewed at trailsandsails.org.

"That's a new lens we're using this year to highlight events that are really important to our partners," said Heather Goss, manager of community engagement for Essex National Heritage Area, which founded the event.

Essex Heritage, as the organization is known, is part of the Department of the Interior and was founded in 1996 to preserve and enhance natural, cultural and historic resources in Essex County.

The four themes being emphasized this year are: the sustainability of natural resources, the importance of coastal salt marshes, opportunities for outdoor recreational and wellness activities, and new discoveries about local history. The themes highlight the fact that many of the organizations in Trails and Sails are actively involved in addressing important issues.

Goss pointed to the example of those members of the Great Marsh Coalition, which is dedicated to protecting the Great Salt Marsh that stretches from Cape Ann to New Hampshire, who will be highlighting their work at Trails and Sails.

"They're using their events to get their message out," Goss said.

Coalition members include The Trustees of Reservations, which is hosting a "Bird's Eye View of the Great Marsh" from the roof of the Crane Estate in Ipswich, along with several other programs. Greenbelt, the Essex County land trust, is offering tours of the Allyn Cox Reservation in Essex, a 31-acre property on the edge of the Great Marsh and the Essex River.

People can take self-guided tours at the Cox Reservation throughout Trails and Sails at any time during daylight hours, or may register for a tour led by Greenbelt President Kate Bowditch at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 20.

Recreation and wellness

Another theme that Essex Heritage has identified for this year's Trails and Sails programs — recreation and wellness — is addressed by several programs in the Merrimack Valley, including "Exploring Den Rock Park" in Lawrence on Saturday, Sept. 17 at 10 a.m.

The tour will be led by Tennis Lilly of Groundwork Lawrence, who also chairs the Conservation Commission in Lawrence, and was "heavily involved in the activism" that prevented development of the park's land in the 1990s.

"Den Rock is the largest parcel of conservation land in the city of Lawrence, so it's critically important," Lilly said.

The 80.5 acres of the park is complemented by another 40 or so acres of privately and publicly held conservation land, Lilly said, and it features trails, a beaver pond, a marsh, vernal pools and access to the Shawsheen River.

"The vernal pools support some unique wildlife, such as salamanders, wood frogs, and micro-crustaceans like fairy shrimp, which only appear in the spring and then go dormant," Lilly said.

The Whittier Birthplace in Haverhill is also highlighting its connection to the theme of outdoor recreation and wellness by hosting a Freeman Memorial Self-Guided Tour, which was named for former board member Donald Freeman.

"It's a half mile and goes around, with 13 stops," said Executive Director Kaleigh Pare Shaughnessy. "Each stop has a piece of Whittier's poetry that describes a landscape that you're looking at in that location."

Local history

In addition, the Whittier Birthplace will host an open house and will address another of this year's four themes, relating to uncovering local history, in a virtual lecture that it will host on Thursday, Sept. 22 at 7 p.m.

"We have the director of the Prudence Crandall Museum in Connecticut, who will be speaking about a school for African American girls in the early 1800s, during Whittier's lifetime, and she'll be talking about that school, which is a museum she works for," Shaughnessy said.

Highlighting Whittier's political radicalism, which contrasts with his image as a genteel and countrified "Fireside Poet," is one of her goals as executive director of the Birthplace, Shaughnessy said.

"Many of his earliest poems are kind of his more serious ones, that deal with abolition and the institution of slavery, and those are his less well-known poems," she said.

The theme of sustainability in natural resources is addressed by a program on "Birding on the Little River Trail System," which will be held in Newburyport on Saturday, Sept. 17, by the Parker River Clean Water Association.

Sustainability and the environment

The city of Salem's Sustainability and Resiliency Department, which was formed in July 2021, will be hosting four different programs relating to sustainability and the environment, all of which will be held at the recently rehabilitated Forest River Park.

"All the programs have in common moving from the past to the present," said Stacy Kilb, Sustainability Engagement Coordinator. "'What Have These Trees Seen' will focus on what was in the space before it was a park, and what plants we are using now to keep the park functioning long into the future."

A program on "Welcome to the Anthropocene" will discuss the geological history of the park, with a focus on the geological era in its title.

"The anthropocene is a geological age where humans are changing things so much that those changes show up in the rock layers," Kilb said.

"Helping the Earth, Helping Ourselves" will be held at Pioneer Village, which is located in the park and features replicas of dwellings from Colonial times.

Back on Cape Ann

Massachusett tribe member Thomas Green will talk about the plants that would have grown there when indigenous people were the sole inhabitants of the land. The program will also look at native plant species that have been returned to the park as part of its rehabilitation.

"Then we'll go inside the community room in the new building and make pemmican, the original power bar," Kilb said. "It's dried meat mixed with fat and berries. It will keep for months unfrozen. and we'll make some dandelion tea."

The Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester will host Indigenous Heritage Day on Saturday, Sept. 24, which will address the theme of uncovering local history in part by hosting a performance by the Wampanoag Singers and Dancers.

The event will be held at the Cape Ann Museum Green, off Grant Circle and Route 128, which people can reach by shuttle bus after parking at the O'Maley Innovation Middle School, 32 Cherry St.

Visitors will also be able to watch a demonstration, led by Darius Coombs of the Mashpee Wampanoag, in which remnants from indigenous fishing nets in the museum's collection are restored to their original usage.

"This is our first year for Indigenous Heritage Day,'but we're hoping it will be the first of many," said Miranda Aisling, the museum's education manager. "Part of why we are doing it is, next year is Gloucester's 400-year anniversary of English colonists arriving in 1623."

Will Broaddus may be contacted at wbroaddus@gloucestertimes.com.