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A review by liberrydude
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston
3.0
The modern Thoreau. Instead of Concord and Walden Pond Beston spends a year (1929) in the dunes of what’s now the Cape Cod National Seashore. I’d never heard of him until he was mentioned in another book discussing dark skies and our vanishing night.
He lives alone in a cabin he had built in the dunes. He goes into town for groceries and visits the nearby coast guard detachment, who reciprocated with visits while patrolling the beach. His writing is very descriptive, almost poetic. The music of the sea. The constellations of birds. He describes the murmuration of bird formations without using that word.
He comments on everything. There’s nothing to do but observe. He’s never bored. Birds and animals take up a good portion of the book. The natural world, the environment, the weather, and climate all get his scrutiny as well. There are musings on night and darkness and an ode to the sense of smell.
His year on the beach was by no means peaceful. There were many shipwrecks and deaths along the shore. He writes too about the operations, procedures, and equipment of the coast guard. We learn these men are called “surfmen.”
It’s hard to believe this book is so unknown and it’s a shame too. I much preferred it to Thoreau.
Some great quotes:
“Be the answer what it will, today’s civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”
“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.”
He lives alone in a cabin he had built in the dunes. He goes into town for groceries and visits the nearby coast guard detachment, who reciprocated with visits while patrolling the beach. His writing is very descriptive, almost poetic. The music of the sea. The constellations of birds. He describes the murmuration of bird formations without using that word.
He comments on everything. There’s nothing to do but observe. He’s never bored. Birds and animals take up a good portion of the book. The natural world, the environment, the weather, and climate all get his scrutiny as well. There are musings on night and darkness and an ode to the sense of smell.
His year on the beach was by no means peaceful. There were many shipwrecks and deaths along the shore. He writes too about the operations, procedures, and equipment of the coast guard. We learn these men are called “surfmen.”
It’s hard to believe this book is so unknown and it’s a shame too. I much preferred it to Thoreau.
Some great quotes:
“Be the answer what it will, today’s civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”
“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.”