Sign at the intersection of Route 6A and Snail Road in Provincetown, MA.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: below shot of me leaving for Provincetown in 2011; below that, a shot of me leaving in 2012. 

January 15, 2011.

February 1, 2012.

This is my third winter at the Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony inProvincetown. While I know what to expect, I also don’t, which strikes a little trepidation in me: every time I get into the car to come here, I wonder what new discoveries and revelations await me, and even though they are almost always positive, I cannot say that the journey to them is always pleasant.

One of my favorite things to do while I’m here is get out for a drive every day—not necessarily to go anywhere; with the town being three miles long and its roads basically one large loop, it’s really easy to just put on some tunes and admire the beautiful landscape and take a break from work. One of the things I’ve noticed about Ptown’s winters (even last year, which was snowier than usual), is that when they are not gray (which honestly, at least when I’ve been here, really isn’t that often), they are sunny and bright—a cure for me, who suffers from lack of light, and I know for a fact that where I live is much, much grayer much more often during the winter months.

For fun, I thought I’d share my drives from 2010 and 2012 (for some reason, I cannot find the 2011 film, although I remember doing it). What’s most interesting to me is that, just as my 2010 experience was so vastly different from my 2012 experience, the type of sunny winter is also vastly different: 2010 was, just as it appears on the video, much colder, and you can see that in the way the sun and the landscape looks compared to 2012—which looks a little bit more like spring sun and there’s good reason for that, since it hasn’t really dropped below forty-five degrees since I’ve been here. It feels like March, not February, and again, the sun and landscape reflect that difference. It’s this type of thing that reminds me—and should remind us all—that sometimes it’s okay to go home again; everything changes, even if in only the smallest ways, and most of the time, it’s for the best.

Enjoy (excuse the Peter Cetera; that’s the only CD I listen to when I’m here, and really don’t know why except that it seems to mellow me out).