There is a strange thing that happens when you walk along the shoreline, especially along the Backshore of Provincetown. It becomes near impossible to judge distances. I am notorious for thinking everything is just twenty minutes away. I have lost friends over this, poor strollers who found themselves on forced marches through the dunes, with nothing to show for it but shoes full of sand and tight hamstrings.
But there is always something in the distance that intrigues me, always something further I want to find.
On the beach, the light bends and twists, salt spray slapping the Peaked Hill Bars, invisible under the waves but always there, always shifting. In winter, there is little in the way of visual interest to break up the undulating cliffs of sand. How easy it becomes to get lost in the rhythms of your footsteps, the sigh of the waves. The occasionally terrifying drone of your own thoughts.
How many winter days pass where the sea and sky are the same murky grey color? No horizon. There is only this, only now, only what the naked eye can see. Only the sound, distant, of gulls.
I keep going, even when I can’t see what is ahead.
I found myself thinking of these kinds of walks—these blind hikes, disorienting, dizzy at times—as a young friend neared the end of her life, right as the new year was just beginning.
I had known her since we were girls, set loose on the streets of Provincetown, wandering down every narrow street, trying to memorize every detail of our town. As she fell gravely ill in late December, I kept returning to this vision of walking along the shoreline, walking into the unknown. I knew there would quickly become a point where she would continue this figurative walk alone, beyond where the rest of us were allowed to go.
I could see the beach, dotted with No Trespassing signs.
We live in a place that is constantly shifting. The landscape, the people. All of this is temporary. It seems too long and too short all at once. Already, the world is remaking itself. The tide rises and falls dramatically twice a day; sailboats are left to ride on their keels. I remember the knots I learned to tie as a child. The light is returning. There is something in the distance, just beyond that bend, just beyond that sand dune.
I have to keep going until I find out what it is.
