By Stephanie Foster

When I won the lottery, I cried. But it wasn’t a big jackpot; it was a residency in a Provincetown Dune Shack. I was thrilled, until the reality hit me. There was no electricity, running water or indoor toilet. My friends were excited too. “Are you crazy?” they asked. I was a senior citizen, not a Girl Scout.

C-Scape overseer, Tom Boland loaded my belongings in his truck in late October. I looked as if I was going to Antarctica. He didn’t say a word. The pale dunes looked dramatic against the bleak sky. Then, the two-room shack appeared in the distance. Up close, The doorknob hung from the door like an eyeball out of its socket. inside the paint was beyond peeling. This was not rustic Ralph Lauren Land. This was the real thing.

I quickly became acquainted with kerosene, propane and wood and put the word, “combustible” out of my mind. Outside, Tom pointed out the composting toilet, a plastic bag he called a solar shower and the water pump, where I learned what “priming the pump” meant. I was now ready for my dune shack experience.

Saturday
I brought linens, flashlights, warm clothes, bottled water and enough food to feed the crew of a capsized ship. I stuff newspaper into window cracks and hang a blanket between the two rooms. The living room is toasty but I can still see my breath in the kitchen. When I look at the chair covered with a puffy blue throw of unknown origin, the words, bugs and pestilence come to mind. I am reluctant to sit in it. I never realized what a priss I was.

Sunday
A howling storm wakes me. The shack is trembling as if it had a terrible fever. Outside the wind screams like an angry, crazed animal. I huddle in the dark, wondering if the shack will collapse around me. In daylight, it seems sturdier.

It’s slowly becoming home. A lemon sits on the window sill along with a glass of fresh herbs in water. Shell necklaces I made decorate the wall. Beachcombing treasures line the deck. The creepy-crawly chair turned out to be Cloud Nine. And so far there are no mice.

I walk to the beach in hopes of finding scallops washed ashore. Yum-de-dum-dum. But there are only coyote tracks in sand that has been swept clean by the storm.

Monday
I am counting my sins. Last night, I left half-a-cookie on the counter. The sin was not that I ate half of the cookie. No. It was that I left half for the mice. I was warned to hang my food from the ceiling and keep it in tins because there was no way to keep the mice out. I also left dirty dishes in the sink. That’s what happens after one day without a mouse sighting. A body gets lax.

At dawn when I get up, the cookie is untouched. I still had time to repent. Outside, the sunrise is a gigantic watercolor spread across the sky. A huge finger painting of dark inky clouds. It’s too moody to be a pretty and too contrasty for a camera to capture. Words are inadequate to describe the beauty. Like saying the word chocolate rather than eating it.

Tom surprises me with a visit at dinnertime. There is a hurricane warning, do I want to evacuate? I can hear and feel the pounding waves inside the dune shack. Since the tsunami in Asia, I am deeply afraid of them. But I stay.

Tuesday
Well, shiver me timbers. What a storm! I lie in bed, frozen with fear, as if there were a monster under the bed. My body is paralyzed while my mind reviews every possible calamity, from a rogue wave cresting the dunes, to the roof blowing off.

It rages all day making my chair shimmy and the kerosene slosh in the lantern. Meanwhile I read “The Outermost House” and it is as if Henry Beston is sitting beside me.
“The North Atlantic was a convulsion of elemental fury whipped by the sleety wind, the great parallels of the breakers tumbling all together and mingling in one seething and immense confusion, the sound of this mile of surf being an endless booming roar, a seethe and a dread grinding, all intertwined with the high scream of the wind.”

Wednesday
Today the shack is filled with silence. I walk, fill the water jugs, bring in wood. I love this simple life. Clothes don’t matter or how I look.
My body is merely a container for my spirit.
There is no stress or strife.
Just peace.
Why can’t life be like this all the time?
The sun vanquishes the brooding quality of the landscape. The surf is frothy and playful. Puffy white clouds scoot across the blue sky. Photographs come and go before I can focus my camera. I want to share the beauty of the ocean, sky and dunes. No wonder artists come here.

Thursday
My diary entries are shorter now.
There is less chatter going on in my head.
I forget to brush my teeth and hair, I’m so preoccupied with my inner life. My thoughts come like raindrops. First there is one. Splat. Then another. Splat. Only a van heading up the beach with fishing poles on top, reminds me that there is another world out there. I enjoy my small life, searching for kindling, pumping water, tending the stove. I have a need to work and be worthy. I find a staff and use it as a walking stick. I have been reborn as a pioneer woman.

Friday
Night sounds make me think- MICE. A squeak or squeal in the rafters - MICE! A rattling of a window pane - MICE! During the day, loose tarpaper rubs against the roof. wood shrinks and expands. But at night it is a mouse.

I watch the swallows swoop low over the dunes and up again, over and over. Their dark wings arch like boomerangs as they soar through the sky.
Is it laziness that makes me linger or awe?
I have started packing, so I will have more time tomorrow But I’m only exchanging one minute for another.

Saturday
During my final walk on the beach, a gull flies overhead, wings outstretched in the thermals. He is soaring for the sheer joy of it. I will try to remember this joy of exercise, the next time I’m looking for a parking space at the mall.

It is time to go. I see signs of other residents in the dune shack who have been there before me. A bracelet composed of sea glass, pretty painted stones, collections of shells. Everyone wants to leave a trace of themselves behind. I place my walking staff by the woodpile and leave a tiny glass vase on the narrow windowsill. Alas, I also leave my heart.