Business Trip

I'm in Provincetown for a week for work. That is a sentence that I sincerely hope each and every one of you, along with everyone you know, has the chance to say at least once in your lives. It's a week of sun-splashed quaintness that is virtually unrivaled in my experience. This former fishing village has been transformed over the years and is now, in my opinion, the headquarters of love.

Like Australia, or Galapagos, things just seem to have developed differently here. For a long time, the very end of Cape Cod, where Provincetown sits, was cut off from the mainland. Not quite an island, and not quite not, Ptown was the perfect combination of remote and sheltered. Here, the Cape curls in on itself creating an absolutely perfect breakwater and harbor. The water is so calm that at one point, when it became clear that some houses built out on the very end of the Cape weren't safe there, people were able to float the houses across the bay to the main village. Many of them still stand there today.

Provincetown has long been a community known for acceptance and inclusion, especially for the gay community. Walking up and down the streets (or street, really) you are quickly reminded of how many different kinds of people it takes to make the world. Good moods abound, and people are generally as pleasant as you could hope for them to be. Anyone can talk with anyone, or anyone can keep to themselves. Anything goes in this town, and everywhere you look, there's proof.

I feel very lucky and thankful that I have been able to visit the Cape fairly regularly throughout my life. In recent years, it's been a priority for my wife and I to get out here at least once a year. We've come to know that there is something special about waking up on Cape Cod. The sea is in the air, and everything just feels different. This year I started what I hope will become a new tradition. I took a boat ride out to the very end of the Cape at Long Point. No one was around, and I just sat, reflecting on the year behind me and the year ahead. Call it the end, or call it the beginning, doesn't really make a difference. Spots like that are to be embraced.