Northern Shores Seafood and scenic splendor on Massachusetts' Cape Ann Alaska Airlines magazine, July 2005 By Matt Villano The water is bubbling, as if someone has dropped a giant Alka-Seltzer into the glass-calm ocean beside us. Peering of the side of the MV Yankee Spirit, I witness tiny, pencil-shaped fish jumping frantically from the percolating patch. Before any of the fish can get away, three hulking black monoliths pierce the surface with a woosh, mouths agape. The cetaceans pause briefly to expel seawater with their giant tongues, then close their jowls around the catch and swallow. The snouts form familiar profiles: humpback whales like those I've spied in Alaska, only now they're off the Cape Ann peninsula in New England's steely Massachusetts Bay. Cape Ann is a granite-strewn apostrophe of land that juts into the ocean 35 miles north of Boston. Here, in working-class cities Gloucester, Rockport, Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea, just about every family boasts a fisherman, and lobster potting nearly rivals baseball as the regional pastime-even now that the Red Sox are World Series champions. Like the rest of New England, the region is rife with history, dating to the first settlement by the British in 1623. Cape Ann is less often visited than the more well-known Cape Cod, making Cape Ann a wonderful getaway for a weekend or more. I head for Cape Ann the old-fashioned way, by train. Maine-ward from Boston's North Station, the suburbs of Chelsea and Lynn gradually give way to quaint seaside towns and rocky, wooded hills. I disembark at the Gloucester station and hike up rowhouse-lined Prospect Street to the Julietta House Bed & Breakfast, my home for the trip. This classic Italianate, built in the 1860s by sea captain Benjamin Lowe, is a stately 16-room mansion that overlooks the busy harbor down the hill. Stairs creak. Nooks and crannies abound. When I drop my bags in the "Captain's Terrace" room upstairs, a seagull peers quizzically through the window at me from the railing of my balcony. The harbor exerts a tug on my curiosity, and I wander down Pleasant Street to the wharf, where on rickety Fish Pier, I watch as bearded men in orange smocks unload boats filled with tuna, bluefish and cod. Many of these locals spend weeks at a time in the North Atlantic, a grueling life that was immortalized in Sebastian Junger's book The Perfect Storm and a blockbuster movie by the same name. At the end of the dock, a boat is defying gravity with the heft of its catch. I approach one ski-capped fellow and ask him how long he's been at sea. "Too long," he tells me between puffs of his cigarette. "Way too long." Despite these rigors, fishing is a major way of life in Gloucester: Two hundreds and seventy vessels with a total of 692 crew members have federal fishing permits for 2005. Countless other residents own boats and fish for sport. The Gloucester Seafood Display Auction (closed to the public) is the largest daily auction of fresh seafood in North America, with 100,000 to 125,000 pounds of fish changing hands each day; the auction sets seafood prices up and down the East Coast. And Gorton's, the company that made frozen fish sticks famous, has its headquarters downtown. The fishing industry and the beauty of the area have been magnets for artists who, over the years, have come to Gloucester to paint. Fitz Hugh Lane, Stuart Davis, Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper are among the prominent artists who have spent time recording life here. At a crooked spit of land on the eastern side of the harbor, I take in artwork by modern-day artists. The Rocky Neck Art Colony, a group of galleries on a cobblestone street, is the epicenter of the local art scene. Here, I discover colorful scenes of local gardens and beaches on silk. The artist, Judith Goetemann, explains that she paints the silk, with dye. She also employs batik, an elaborate process that uses wax and dyes, to create vibrant textiles. It's dinnertime, and all the focus on the sea makes me hungry for seafood. I savor a delicious fish stew of clams, mussels, calamari and haddock at Alchemy, an upscale bistro with a British motif and innovative cuisine. The next morning, I'm up with the gulls to catch an 8 a.m. whale-watching expedition with local fishing operator Yankee Fleet. Lisa Fox, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Oceanic Research and Education, welcomes us aboard and talks the boatload of New Englanders through the feeding frenzy that we witness just five miles from shore. All the while, the Boston skyline rises from the horizon to a south, a constant reminder that civilization is never far away. Fox explains that whales return to the waters off Cape Ann every year for the fish. Currents running along an underwater sandbar known as Stellwagen Bank create "upwelling," whereby nutrient-rich water from the Gulf of Maine is swept from the bottom of the water column to the top. The water's nutrients nourish the growth of oceanic plants, or phytoplankton. This virtual vegetable soup feeds blooms of microscopic animals, which in turn support a vast, multi-layered food web that culminates with the great whales. This area is so important to New England's biosphere that in 1992 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave it the distinction of National Marine Sanctuary. "This is their turf," Fox says respectfully of the whales. "Out here, we are the visitors, not them." The ocean, its inhabitants and the area's maritime history are keys to other nearby towns, as well. Ten miles north, in the White Elephant Shop in Essex, landlubbers' antiquities such as teak dressers and vanities sit side by side with age-old compasses and brass winches. This tiny town, situated at the mouth of the Essex River, was one of the shipbuilding capitals of the world, manufacturing nearly 4,000 wooden ships between the 1600s and 1949. Essex continues to embrace its past; the town center is replete with antiques stores. Down the street, the Essex Historical Society and Shipbuilding Museum features an informative exhibit about the town's role in the burgeoning fisheries industry. I admire the circa 1927 Evelina M. Goulart, one of seven historic Essex-built schooners that exist today. Built for swordfish fishing, the 85-foot-long vessel has a propeller-a reminder of the transition from sail to engine; the advent of the engine marked the shipbuilding industry's decline in Essex. I cap my trip to Essex with yet another piece of local history: dinner at Woodman's of Essex restaurant. On this site in 1916, Lawrence "Chubby" Woodman invented the fried clam by deep-frying mollusks fresh from the Essex River. Today, five generations later, the Woodman's specialty is as crispy and delicious as ever; I settle in at a picnic table overlooking the river and blissfully enjoy every morsel. Sunlight streams across my windowsill early the next morning and I awaken to the familiar sight of seagulls peering in at me. It's time to hit the road to Rockport, the northernmost town on Cape Ann. The road hugs the coastline almost the whole way, weaving among rounded boulders of granite to offer breathtaking vistas of ocean and mansion-size vacation homes. I pull over four or five times to enjoy the sight and invigorating sound of the waves dashing against the shore. I drive into downtown Rockport, where granite is used for everything from street curbs to retaining walls inside the marina. Soon after fisherman settled the town in 1690, they discovered that it sat atop one of the largest granite outcroppings in the world. Over the next 200 years, the rock was quarried and shipped as cobblestones all over the world, from Boston's Faneuil Hall to the streets of Havana, Cuba. On Bearskin Neck, a pier of fishing shacks reborn as studios and galleries, I am introduced to Rockport through its art. At the Barn Gallery, I admire oil and watercolor works by Andrew Menna, a Massachusetts artist who has been painting Rockport scenes since 1970. As I walk toward the end of the "Neck," one building catches my eye because it has not been modernized. Fire truck red and covered in buoys, this landmark is known simply as Motif #1. The structure, erected in 1978, is a replica of the original shed built on the site in 1948. It is one of the most frequently photographed buildings in America; another replica is on display at Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. In years past, fishing sheds such as Motif #1 were used to store lobster pots. I pay homage with a lobster roll at The Greenery in nearby Dock Square. This delicacy-chunks of succulent lobster meat nestled in a hot-dog bun-is a quintessential North Atlantic treat. I wander down to Toad Hall bookstore, a center for local conservation. Founded by the Essex County Ecological Center in 1972, Toad Hall donates 100 percent of its profits to environmental projects. Over the years, the store has awarded more than $135,000 in grants to local efforts such as recycling, water-quality monitoring and school science programs. While perusing the shelves for books about Cape Ann history, I spy a trail map for a local park named Dogtown Common. What a find! (I'm an avid hiker.) Five dollars and 15 minutes later I'm at the park's trailhead. The roughly 3,000-acre "Common" has had many lives over the course of Cape Ann history: quarry, village, berry bog and more. Nowadays, the area, with its 15 miles of trails, is a popular recreation spot. I wend my way on a trail through hemlock trees and blueberry bushes for two miles until I reach the main attraction: the Babson Boulders. This man-made phenomenon consists of 23 granite slabs inscribed with inspirational words and phrases such as "Courage," "Loyalty"-and even "Keep out of Debt" and "Get a Job." The boulders were gifts from Roger Babson, a millionaire and one-time presidential candidate who donated the park to the town during the Great Depression. My favorites read "Be on Time" and "Never Try, Never Win." These time-tested values hold true today and perfectly capture the hard-work-oriented ethos of this beautiful hideaway.