Huff, puff: how Hurricane Isabel will blow your holiday home down

I was at the very northern tip of the Cape, in the small settlement of Provincetown. It was here that the Pilgrim Fathers first made landfall from England. It's a small place and they might have moved on because they found it a bit windy. After them came fishermen – the name Cape Cod wasn't picked by chance, the waters were stuffed with fish waiting to be battered. My Viking forebears called the place Wunderstrand or "wonderful beach".

Provincetown is not a place you pass through; it lies so isolated that travellers only arrive on purpose. In the early 20th century it drew artists, writers and actors to explore their craft. Here they could live simply and cheaply, pummelled by the dramatic elements and piercing light into creating some splendid work. The great American playwright Eugene O'Neill made his debut on a pier in town, the brilliant painter Edward Hopper brought paints and pad summer after summer and the actress Bette Davis started her career as an usherette at the local theatre.

I have been here often, and each time I fantasise about staying and settling down. The town is stuffed with former high-flyers who have abandoned the city and now play at arts and crafts while tramping about in a pair of sandals.

Right out on the sand dunes, a 45-minute walk from the road, lie some small shacks. They consist of no more than one room with a wood-burning stove and an outhouse. At one time it was the poorest of writers or painters who occupied these isolated miniature houses. Today these shacks are no longer the refuge of the thoughtful artiste but rather a hotly contested prize in the modern desire to "get away from it all". It was in the doorway of one such shack that I braced myself as Isabel puffed her last across the waters and tried to imagine living there. I know I would like living here. No phone, no passers-by, just time to think and stare at the sea.

I have been here often, and each time I fantasise about staying. The town is stuffed with former high-flyers tramping about in sandals

But it's not an option. You couldn't buy a Provincetown dune shack today if you wanted to; they are fiercely protected and the keys are only given to those in the know.

Back in town, the once-cheap clapboard housing has soared in price and now excludes the children of local families from making their home in their own town. Small studio "condos" – single rooms no bigger than a dune shack but encroached on all sides by the swelling population – sell for more than £200,000. And all around town, developers are busy throwing up more wooden housing split into ergonomic pieces.

I sat and chatted with a man whose family has lived on the outermost cape for generations. "Stormy" Mayo is a marine biologist and the local whale expert. He shook his head in despair at the relentless development and said they were only storing up trouble for themselves. It is 50 years since a hurricane gave the town a "real blow" and Stormy reckons there is another one coming. He says builders don't know how to prepare the houses against the weather: Isabel passed by in a flurry of minor swells and shakes but bothered no one, the hammering and sawing continued. The world, said Stormy, had become complacent about the elements and would rue the day in the future.