The Outermost House

The Outermost House by Henry Beston

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I¡¯ve made multiple trips to the beautiful dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore over the years, and like so many others I have found the landscape to be one of my favorite places on earth. The writer and naturalist Henry Beston deserves no small thanks for this. His 1928 book tells the story of the year he spent living on the Outer Cape in a small house¡ªwhich he affectionally named ¡°The Fo¡¯castle¡±¡ªperched atop a dune.?The Outermost House brought needed attention to the wild beauty of the Cape¡¯s fragile sands, which developers would soon begin to eye. Some three decades later the Cape Cod National Seashore was created, giving all of us access to explore this special part of New England. ¡ªIan Aldrich, Yankee executive editor??

A chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach,?The Outermost House?has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he “could not go.”

Instead, he sat down to try and capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to: the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued that, “The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” Seventy-five years after they were first published, Beston’s words are more true than ever.

• Publisher:? Holt Paperbacks
• Language:? English
• Print length:? 256 pages
• Item Weight:? 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions:? 5.15 x 0.65 x 7.45 inches