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WOODS HOLE, Mass. — As you jog along the curving 3-mile road that leads down to the water on the southernmost tip of Cape Cod, you’ll pass five of the world’s leading marine and environmental institutions.

You’ll glimpse the solar arrays and wind turbine of the , where scientists and scholars study climate change and its impact around the world. You’ll wind your way past our local U.S. Geological Survey center, within the Quissett campus of the famed . Just as you begin questioning why you started running in the first place, you’ll hit the Marine Biological Laboratory, a private nonprofit affiliated with 58 Nobel Prize winners since 1929. And finally, after passing exhausted doctoral students working in the coffee shop, you’ll reach the harbor by the .

The run ends on a grassy patch of land, , where rock walls drop sharply into the Vineyard Sound.

There, probably wheezing, you’ll smell the briny water and see the statue of a cross-legged scientist seated on a bench, notebook in hand, smiling coyly at the sea. 

Eve Zuckoff is a Report for America corps member, covering climate change for , the local NPR member station for the Cape, Islands and South Coast of Massachusetts. This essay is part of a series called “,” supported by The GroundTruth Project. 

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