Welcome, dear reader: here is your very own free ticket to the adventures ahead — the year 2022. All that’s required of you is to strap in, pay attention, and enjoy the ride. Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle. Helmets and eye protection are optional. Please consider the experience of others as you go.
With this ticket, you may enjoy the following (terms and conditions may apply):
Sunrises over the ocean, complete with seagulls that, midwinter, may want to stand on your windshield, warming their feet. Note that others may enjoy the same sunrise as you. Whipping wind or quiet stillness, temperature dependent on time of redemption. Limit one per day.
Sunshine, complete with vitamin D. A warning to those who indulge: the risks vary but are prevalent. Enjoy responsibly.
High tides and low tides included in admission. You have no choice in this. The smell of low tide is free and available at least once a day, perhaps twice, if you’re lucky and determined.
Fresh water for swimming, drinking, washing, and recreation. Temperature dependent on timing, location, and season redeemed.
Full, crescent, waning, and waxing moons, all offered at monthly intervals. Charts with timing and an attentive eye necessary.
Sunsets over the bay, through treetops, from windows, atop sand dunes, from porches, piers, and automobiles. As with moons, charts with timing help. Limit one per day.
Fresh fish, bivalves, crustaceans, and other edible sea creatures, provided you can locate the appropriate human intermediaries and are not deathly allergic. Fees apply.
Rain to drench lawns, seagrasses, scrub pine forests, and gardens, and fill birdbaths, ponds, and neglected buckets. Terms apply. High likelihood that said rain will pour through windows left open. Mind vehicles, boat hatches, and coffee cups accordingly.
First homes, second homes, barely-there homes: we are working now to fill in the threadbare spots for all users to enjoy.
Incredibly luxurious pleasures that our ancestors could never have imagined: warm rooms, hot water, and light without fire. Transportation that doesn’t require food, water, or shelter. Handheld technology to communicate when and where you ate that oyster, saw that shark, that sunset, that meeting spot where your loved ones should wait.
Beach stickers, dump stickers, bumper stickers (but most likely not pot stickers) available to everyone who wishes to shell out.
Lines to wait in guaranteed but limited to the summer season. Lines for the beach, stickers, permits, chowder, ice cream, bathrooms, and bars. We have all kinds here in 2022.
Pond dips, ocean dips, bay dips, ice-cream-cone dips — we’ve got them all.
Differing opinions on many subjects are available to you in 2022. Just listen. Then yell with fingertips, vocal cords, or not at all. Player’s choice.
A reasonably peaceful existence free of home-turf war and famine, filled to the brim with delights and dismay, depending on your day.
Friendly staff from all walks of life available to help sort through possibilities, whether they be on fire, online, in conflict, in resolution, in good faith or not, in your body, in your mind, or elsewhere. Fees may apply.
An array of emotions. Be advised: some stick longer than others; use at your own risk. Seek support staff when needed. Fees apply.
With this ticket of admission to the year on Outer Cape Cod, you can fill your shoes with sand to your heart’s delight. Drink in the salty air, breathe out what you accumulated in 2021. Breathing limited to one human for every six feet. Terms and conditions may apply. Limit none.
You may be overwhelmed by the options, concerned with time constraints, bothered by the fine print. Have no worry, there is no catch. Just a request that you do more than simply survive: Please, bear witness.
