COBALT is ALL About Co-Creating A Story Of Place

Instead of asking ‘what’ is the place in which I live, the COBALT Learning Journey is about embarking on a process of discovering ‘who’ is this remarkable land, air and water. This includes learning how to see the patterns that has given this place life. This opens up exploration, careful observation, learning how to see together. Here in the Casco Bay Bioregion, nested within the Gulf of Maine on the Western Shore of the Atlantic Ocean, the exploration of its identity requires a long view. We can begin with explosions 500 million years ago, with some the largest volcanos ever known on earth creating unimaginable mountains, followed by deep time of the mountains slowly transforming. The “weathering” reshaping the land. Then further periods of earthquakes, volcanism and glaciation that has shaped the current features. This is a journey of guided imagination, to “fly” from the top of Mount Washington down the mighty Saco, Androscoggin, Presumpscot Rivers, and dive deep into the lakes along the way like Sebago, and splash in the estuaries of the Royal and Stroudwater as you approach the archipelago of Casco Bay. This land is source of life for indigenous peoples who have lived here for time immemorial, yes a source of clothes, food, energy and water – but perhaps more importantly a sense of song and belonging together.

Today, after 600 years of colonization and patterns of development, we see the great benefits and the deep costs with fractures and scars abounding in society all around us. If we squint deeply, we can imagine crossing tipping points where we support systems approaching their tipping points. Casco Bay Bioregion is nested within the Gulf of Maine, now famous for being one of the most rapidly warming systems on the planet, second only to the Arctic. Regenerating the health and adapting to the future of this bioregion requires working with the patterns of life that support its thriving as a whole socio-ecological system. Discovering these patterns, its essence, the unique nature is the focus on our community-based scholarship, creating a Bioregional Data Lab or a Transformations Lab (T-Lab).

This collaborative is a beginning, an opportunity to be together as part of a global movement, and our focus is place-based! Our goal is to offer a journey of guided imagination to build relationship and work to discover unique potential, identify and explore new possibilities for collective practice and experience the authentic wholeness of place. We will appreciate and will learn how to better see, connect and amplify the innovations already well underway in food, fiber, energy, water, waste, and tourism as well as take the time that is needed to let go of what needs to change and build renewal of our love of place and the wholeness and patterns of life.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”