Provincetown Causeway
2023-03-29
I'm walking across the Provincetown Causeway, heading towards the Long Point Lighthouse. It's a rather hypnotic journey across the rocks on this beautiful sunny yet chilly spring morning. I'm the only person on the whole thing. As I stop in the middle and look around, I'm struck by the beauty of it all. The sea shimmers as the tide lowers, the seagulls walk and swim in the shallow water flanking the parade of rocks. I look up and see a clear blue sky with a few wispy clouds. My eyes have been staring down for too long while working my way forward, and as a result I'm experiencing that optical illusion where the world looks like it's drifting away from me when I look around. This is a sublime moment in spacetime.
The causeway is deceptive. One cannot easily get a sense of scale; it feels like you walk for a long time and have made no progress. It's not unlike life for me at this point in time. I feel like I've come so far on my journey, but I still (hopefully) have so much more to go. Some stretches of the walk are easier and smoother. Some are rough, where suddenly the rocks become spaced out and angular and I have to tread carefully so I don't slip and fall. But all I can do is keep on putting one foot in front of the other, and keep on making my way forward. Things have been particularly rough lately, which is why I've escaped to Provincetown for a bit for some solitude and peace. But as I walk along this causeway, I'm forming a sense that as rough as it is now, things are going to be okay. Some stretches of life will be easier, some will be harder. There isn't an easy way to predict the trajectory, except for maybe what you see right in front of you.
As I walk along this causeway, along this path of life, I see the changing ocean tides around me. I see the seagulls going with the flow. I feel the sun on my face, rising higher into the sky every day, and I feel the fresh ocean breeze blow over my ears and my hair. And I know that I'll be able to handle the seasons of my life. No, it won't all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good. This journey is deceptive, it's long, it's highly variable. I can't get a sense of how far away the end is, but I don't need to. Right here, right now, heading towards the end of the cape, the end of the world, in Provincetown, I've found exactly what I'm looking for.