Wellfleet in Winter

In the time I’ve been living here, much has changed. Many younger people of course have aged, like me. Many younger people have been priced out. Since deductions for second homes were granted by the IRS, the class structure here has gone from year round people who were sometimes poor, sometimes middle class, rarely affluent to a lot of affluent suburban people or even the very, very rich. They have summer homes and only occupy them for a month or maybe two months a year. The rest of the time, they stand empty. These people are not part of the community in any meaningful way. Generally unless something annoys them, they have no interest in local politics or problems. One of them actually said to me when I was talking about water issues, don’t tell me! I want to keep this place worry-free. There used to be mostly year round people and now there are mostly summer people who own houses. Land was cheap when I moved here. Building was cheap too compared to now. There were ordinary houses that you could buy if you didn’t want to build from scratch. Now of course there are many tear-downs. Wealthy people buy perfectly livable houses, tear them down and erect McMansions that they use very part-time. Then a number of the people who do live here more or less year-round no longer live here year-round. They go off to San Allende Mexico, to Puerto Rico, to Florida or Arizona or the Caribbean for much of the winter or even longer. Half our friends disappear. They send annoying messages about how warm it is where they are, as if we give a damn. They are gloating. I don’t have any desire to go where they are. Winters are sometimes easy; this year winter is desperately hard. But I don’t like hot weather. My brain doesn’t work above 75. I actually work. Winter is always a great time to get a lot of writing done. I have three books in process with their publishers. There were folks who lived off the land when first I moved here; nobody does that now. Politics here is always passionate, but then far more inhabitants cared what happened. I have a sense of the history of this place that few of the new people share. This is a not a real place to many of the people who visit or summer here, but how real is it to the folks who disappear for much of the year? I love the land in a very dogged and hardworking way. I am tied to it. My mother and my dead cats are part of the soil. I’d like to end up that way. Living here has made me attuned to the seasons, tides, the moon, the birds and animals who inhabit this land with me. I worry about the future of Wellfleet, with more and more of the land covered with empty houses. There is still poverty, invisible to the summer people. Our food pantry is heavily used. Second-hand clothes are much in fashion for many who live here all the time. Our population ages – so many retirees and those of us who have lived here since it was affordable and a busy village – and who will take are of the infirm and disabled? Labor Day used to be the beginning of our active political meetings and actions. Now some groups have to give up meeting for the winter because so many of their members have abandoned the town for someplace warm. Even the local committee organized around creating year-round jobs is on hiatus because so many of its members are not truly year-round. I love this place but its future frightens me. Wellfleet is beautiful in all weathers, never more so than during this fiercest of all winters. I wish more of homeowners could feel that way.