We drive down Hummock Pond Road, where a concrete Jersey barrier marks the end of the asphalt and the beginning of the sea. It’s a shorter drive from town than all the way out to Madaket, and besides, there isn’t really a parking lot at Madaket Beach anymore, the erosion has taken big bites out of the pavement.

I spent my teenage years in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a small city on the banks of the Ohio River. There’s not much about the town that would strike a visitor – or a resident, for that matter – as noteworthy.

Naturalist Dennis Minsky of Provincetown is thinking about birds.

February 10th marked the 25th anniversary of the great fire at Whaler’s Wharf in Provincetown.

Back in late December, on Christmas Eve to be exact, the Cape and Islands were pummeled by a massive transcontinental storm that had plowed across the Great Plains from Minnesota to Texas, bringing freezing gales and blizzard conditions to much of the Northeast.

Last December, I hired a local tree company to take down some pines on the north side of our house. On the face of it, cutting down trees doesn’t seem to be the thing to do in this era of climate change, since trees are excellent “carbon sinks,” storing vast amounts of carbon dioxide.

Many of us have dog stories, dog relationships. One amazing thing we learn is that dogs live full lives within a compressed bracket of ours; we join them as puppies, share time as they mature, witness them grow old, then wish them goodbye.

Come winter, I want to live in the library.Imagine how cozy that would be! Spending a cold winter’s night exploring the tropics in the travel section.

In the winter, my island world, small to begin with, shrinks considerably. I’ve worn a path down Surfside Road, between town and home.