I live in Provincetown but, always, I am thinking about Provincetown. This place has a palpable presence that demands attention. It’s as if Provincetown announces itself as I hike up Howland Street or maneuver the icy edges of Bradford  or trek along the snow-covered dunes.

As winter arrives, the land becomes less background, more figure. The small clutch of residents simplify activities. The streets go silent. The closed-up storefronts dominate and the community becomes a mere speck on the horizon.

Provincetown fascinates because it is a lean stretch of land that edges the sea. Look between cape cottages and you spy the crashing waves. Park behind the brick post office and the beach, only a foot away, entices. Look up and observe the stretch of harbor expanding from Fisherman’s Pier to the long arm of the Coast Guard Station.

I can still see the flocks of fifty ducks that migrate last month, then suddenly landed in the harbor, followed by more flocks splashing down. Spied from behind the post office, it was as if a dark thundercloud had descended upon the sea—shifting, gyrating, and pulsing with iridescent life.

Now, as I turn from my desk, I see MacMillan’s Pier, dotted with fishing boats, glimpsed through branches of maple and shad. When I walk into the kitchen, I view the snow-encrusted breakwater and the lighthouse at Long Point that stands beyond the outstretched rocky arm.

It’s easy to imagine Provincetown as a thin string strung tight along the sea and holding fast against the roaring waves. One moment the ocean caresses the shore; the next, it ravishes its sandy edges.

Provincetown appears to be a place of opposites. It holds the sand of beaches and dunes and the sea of harbor and the black Atlantic. It is old in architectural thinking and new in design and ideas. It is respectful of the past yet adventuresome for the future.  But perhaps the best way to grasp its essence is to see Provincetown through the eyes of physicist Fritjob Capra, as “ a reality which lies beyond opposite concepts.” In truth, Provincetown is not either modern or ancient; either essential change or stagnant past; either winter silent or summer boisterous. Existing beyond simple dichotomies, it thrives with verve and energy.

So, as the New Year arrives, best wishes for a prosperous 2010.

Come visit and taste the delights of this town that lies beyond opposites and remains packed full with surprise.

Driving through the dunes

Things end in fall. Once booming restaurants go silent. Decks filled with bon vivants enjoying champagne and great sunsets fade away. Now abandoned buildings front the sea and patios, alive in summer with fun-filled visitors, lie stripped of tables, chairs and laughter.

To mark the end of the season, restaurateurs in Provincetown often celebrate with late night parties, delicious free food, and Jamaican bands. Some take their staff on mystery trips, be it day sailing around Long Point or dancing at secret out-of-town locations.

Here’s an insider’s look at one of Provincetown’s renowned restaurants, the Edwige, and how owner Nancyann Meads marked this year’s closing. Not surprising, she chose a day imbued with succulent dishes and smart cocktails swirling with fun.

Staff arriving at Tasha Dune Shack

The staff at Edwige brought truck-loads of marinated steak tips, grilled fall vegetables, potato salad studded with boiled eggs, and a mosaic of fresh fruits topped with creme fraiche. Then the culinary entourage, with a pink supply of cosmos, headed into the stretch of dunes to toast the end of  season. Chef Raul Garcia, sous-chef, wait staff, friends and owner gathered together to enjoy the comraderie of this sun-drenched fall day.

At times, they seemed to dance amid the dunes, circling time in a communal ritual that whispered “It’s over.”  Still, the inspired working force of Edwige came together one more time, in the midst of sprawling dunes and bending grasses, to say their final goodbye.

Edwige staff celebrates

Katya: waitress extraodinaire

The aerial view of Fisherman's and MacMillan's piers. Credit: MIke Donovan from Cape Cod Photo, Art & Framing.

It’s the silence that first catches you by surprise. And in this stillness, other sounds rise up like the lapping of waves against the sailboats, the creaking of docks against a rising tide, and the thump of fish boxes dragged along dinghy docks.  Such sounds return with a shock–sounds almost forgotten since early June, muffled by the hubbub of tourists who fill Provincetown to its jam packness in summer.

But now you can hear the putt-putt of a solitary motor as it starts up or the three blasts from the schooner Bay Lady II as she departs MacMillan Pier or even the flags whipping like Tibetan prayer wheels atop the few remaining boats tethered to Fisherman’s Pier.

It’s as if you’ve come to believe that every day will be filled with shrieks, giggles, shouts and chatter, mixed in with barkers announcing nighttime cabarets and street musicians forever entertaining visitors. Then in July, and even more in August, the clamor intensifies, becoming the expected, buzzing background of Provincetown.

So now, weeks and weeks after Labor Day, you’re jolted from the buzzing madness to a stark emptiness that takes some adjustment, even as it comforts and satisfies. In truth, you discover Provincetown and its silence as if for the first time.

Perhaps what shocks is the reality of so much silence, created by the absent voices, the staccato of thousands of tourists that vanishes as the summer people, queued up in caravans, themselves disappear across the Bourne and Sagamore bridges. As visitors depart, they take with them not only their beach-cottage experiences and salt-sprayed memories; they also take away the intense commotion. It’s as if they’ve packed the sounds of beach parties, barbecues, clam bakes, and T-dances deep inside their suitcases and within their knapsacks.

But, now it’s fall. You drive along Fisherman’s Wharf and the once packed wooden pier is empty. You drive to Town Hall and many parking spots await you. You go inside the Post Office and few people stand in line. You walk the beach and spot two people. No one else. The ocean is still. There’s little to disturb the waves. A cormorant flies in and you hear its wings flap.

There’s a palpable silence. It’s a hovering presence, like a sigh. You sense the timbre of sea and sand, the pitch of birds in flight, the slight turn of the wind as a monarch butterfly dips and flutters away.

You have time to look at the Old Reliable Fish House and see, one season later, how much more it’s falling apart. You even count the few remaining pilings left out at sea like abandoned pick-up-sticks.

You hear no voices, no conversations. You forget how still a beach can be, how quiet the bay ultimately is, how silent sand is. And at night, you look up and almost hear the clouds fast passing the full moon.

Still, the stillness and the beauty surprises. A season leaves and quietness returns. You take a deep breath as if you’re sitting in a Zendo and the Zendo is Provincetown.

I look up from my desk fascinated by the splashes of green, the black-brown dirt road and the quaint houses shadowed by sweeping maples. I gaze at this so-called mudhead and know that Charles Hawthorne inspires me.

The artist Charles Hawthorne first brought plein air painting to Provincetown and turned this fishing village into one of America’s earliest art colonies.

Hawthorne encouraged his students to paint models in outdoor light while ignoring the details of eyes and mouths. The results are portraits where patches of color abound and brown washes often replace faces, giving mudheads their unusual name. Painted on Upton board, mudheads remain experiments in color that also included landscapes and still lifes.

There is energy in their studied light and a sense of discovery in the unfinished quality of mudheads. It’s as if creativity were caught in the moment, held in paint while the student artists left for other studies on other days.

Charles Hawthorne introduced Provincetown to European influences. With World War I interrupting overseas travel, he sought out a land reflecting the deep blues of Nice and the greens humming with turquoise-infused skies. Then Hawthorne transformed the working wharves into a cinerama of art students standing in long white dresses, he in a white shirt with rolled sleeves, and all wearing straw hats and white shoes. Like a dancer with brushes, Hawthorne made his way with grace along waterfront set easels.

For Hawthorne, painting was energy shaped by discipline, spontaneity tamed by technique. We see this in Hawthorne’s own paintings that document this Portuguese community, both along the shore and upon the turbulent seas. We grasp this, too, in the fear he caught in many a young man’s eyes, as each set forth on his maiden fishing voyage, sailing away in search of fish and livelihoods.

Still, Hawthorne is not just a historical figure for me, or simply one of America’s great artist, but the man who first bought the land I live on in 1916. He then gave this quarter acre directly below his studio to his sister and brother-in-law. Here the Campbells lived, as I live now, overlooking Long Point with panoramic views of Truro. In this historic Cape, I honor Hawthorne’s legacy, as I put pen to paper and he, years back, spread paint on canvass—both of us driven to catch the unexpected in nature.

Postcards from Provincetown brings to life the tastes and flavors, the scents and sensations that permeate this town. It offers a behind-the-scenes look up and down Commercial Street, upon the boats and docks at MacMillan and Fisherman’s Piers, and along the dunes and ponds edging the National Seashore. It also presents insights and surprises gained from years of living with enthusiasm along this rare spit of land.

So join me in seeing Provincetown from a different vantage point. Welcome aboard!