Nature Knows Everything

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Photo courtesy of How To Academy

Zita Cobb grew up in an unspoiled and magical landscape, a child of an island so remote its inhabitants say it is “far away from far away”. For 400 years the settlers of Fogo Island and their descendants have clung improbably on to their rock in the North Atlantic, where pack ice from Greenland descends each year like pieces of the moon that fell into the sea, and traces of Elizabethan English and Old Irish can still be heard today.

Ms. Cobb's father, an illiterate fisherman who traded his catch with a merchant not for money but essential supplies, taught her what was important in life. “Nature,” he said, “knows everything.” But when industrial trawlers decimated the fish stocks in the surrounding waters, Fogo Islanders faced resettlement or ruin. Her father burned his boat and turned his back to the sea.

She will share the story of how she and her brothers launched projects to help grow the island’s economy, providing hope and a future to its young people by giving them a way to not only survive but also to thrive.

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