The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Decided to head to Cape Cod as a result of reading this timeless narrative on nature, with its clear and direct imperative as relevant today as at any time past or present. On sure, Henry Beston writes - and concludes:‘It is true that there are grim arrangements. Beware of judging them by whatever human values are in style. As well expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life—all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. Live in Nature, and you will soon see that for all its non-human rhythm, it is no cave of pain. As I write I think of my beloved birds of the great beach, and of their beauty and their zest of living.And if there are fears, know also that Nature has its unexpected and unappreciated mercies. Whatever attitude to human existence you fashion for yourself, know that it is valid only if it be the shadow of an attitude to Nature. A human life, so often likened to a spectacle upon a stage, is more justly a ritual. The ancient values of dignity, beauty, and poetry which sustain it are of Nature’s inspiration; they are born of the mystery and beauty of the world. Do no dishonour to the earth lest you dishonour the spirit of man.Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”

I first encountered this book as an undergraduate, in a literature of nature class. I have never been to Cape Cod, and on the surface, I could imagine some readers not being particularly captivated by Beston's descriptions of bird flight, the behaviors of this or that species, the names of different flowers and animals, similar to how some readers understandably have little patience for the technical descriptions of whales and whaling in Moby-Dick.However, as so many reviewers over the decades have noted, there is something captivating, calming in an almost otherworldly way, poetic, and even thrilling in Beston's writing. The book is ostensibly a memoir, but one begins to perceive a greater purpose beyond simply cataloging the seasons of the year at Cape Cod, when one learns that not all of his scientific observations are accurate or even specific to the given season in which they are described. So his purpose is not to teach naturalism, per se, but to convey a sense of the sublime beauty, preciousness, majesty, and drama of the nature he is describing. He does so in a loosely narrative form, and every single time I read or listen to The Outermost House I find myself drawn into the experience of the narrator, and the book somehow, magically, becomes a page-turner.The Outermost House has maintained its status as a classic of American literature, and a cornerstone of nature writing, because Beston succeeds so completely and everything he has set out to do. I highly recommend both the print and audiobook versions.

"When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on nature's sustaining and poetic spirit." Paperback, page 60.I quote this as a taste of a full year of Henry Bestorn's recounting of the "great natural drama" of the seasons on Cape Cod. If you, like me, spend most of your time indoors and nature for you consists of the weather with possible demands of an umbrella, a warm coat, or sun screen, then you have not lived as Henry Beston did in the year he spent on the outer limits of Cape Cod. The seasons with the changes in the Atlantic ocean, the winds, sometimes wild, sometimes gentle, the birds, fish, mammals and insects with their presence or absence were the environment inhabited by the author alone in his little house built out toward the ocean.The people, mainly, but not exclusively, Coast Guardsmen, who stopped by the little house to share his company and, undoubtedly, press away the loneliness that must have occasionally pressed in. He describes the shipwrecks occurring during that year that commanded the attention of the Coast Guard, the residents of the small, nearby towns, and drew the author in as well. Some of the wrecks had very unhappy endings; the life of a sailor can be very uncertain.Neighbors in the nearby towns would look out after him. The book reminds us of the values of good neighbors. But, mainly, the book reminds us of the value of living fully in the seasons of the year. The author's prose is poetic and in some sense I found myself rested while reading the book. I recommend it. Why did I give it 4 stars and not 5? I would have liked for Mr. Beston in more detail the practicalities of living alone near the beach; basically I wanted the book to be longer.

One of the great nature books. A must read for lovers of Cape Cod! Bought this copy to give as a gift.

I've walked the length of The Great Beach barefooted three times, breathing the salt air, feeling both the dry sand of the upper beach, and the wet sand at water's edge, played in the breakers, and have slept on the beach at night. If you have never directly experienced Cape Cod, Henry Beston will take you there. Don't miss this book. Tom Wilson.

Classic of solitude. Beautiful Cape Cod long before it was bumper to bumper all the way to Provincetown.

About the cape before it became a tourist destination.

Yeah, In know it's a famous book but I couldn't finish it. One of my favorite genres is what I call "personal history" which is where I place this book. Most I find engrossing even when they aren't well written. "The Outermost House" is certainly well written but Mr Beston's everyday activities are just to mundane to be of much interest to me.

One of the most mesmerising books I have ever read. Beston marries science and poetry when he writes. He has a chapter devoted to waves - not a subject I’ve encountered before - somehow he is able to catalogue the varying patterns of waves but describes them so lyrically. It’s been a remarkable read and I will reread it again soon.Living far from Cape Cod, maybe one day someone could add images of the birds mentioned in the text, I hunted some down on Pinterest. Beston may have turned me into a birdwatcher.

Great book about living in a small Cape Cod beach hut and about the surrounding nature and wildlife during the seasons!

A classic

Benson records his life through a cycle of seasons on the edges of Cape Cod.

Take and read it and feel home in the wonderful nature of Cape Cod.