Henry Beston (1888–1968)

In this gem of a book, Beston calls for a return to nature, an escape from a world “sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things.” After experiencing civilization at its worst as an ambulance driver in World War One, he returns to Massachusetts and buys property on the eastern shore of Cape Cod, the upper arm bent at the elbow, bravely flexed to face the Atlantic Ocean. He has a two-room house built intended for vacation use. Then, when it is finished, he decides to experience all four seasons. This is a record of that year.

Like his spiritual precursor, Thoreau, Beston carefully observes nature. He names plants, insects, fish, and other aquatic life. He is particularly attentive to birds, noting their comings and goings. There are summer and winter species. Some hover close to shore, and others venture far out to sea.

His closest human companions are those who man the Coast Guard station at the Nauset light. He details their night watches and efforts to save storm-wrecked ship crews.

One of my favorite passages begins the next-to-last chapter of the book, in which Beston laments our neglect of the sense of smell and describes the fragrances of sand and surf in the changing seasons and weather.

Nearly a century on, the world Beston describes has continued to change. Much of what he lived among is now endangered; his call for “another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals” has gone unheeded, except for by the few. The house, named a national literary landmark, only stood for a half-century before being rent asunder in a fierce winter storm. But that loss, of a mark of civilization, is minor compared to that of the wildlife he lovingly observes. Seeing this passing world through Beston’s eyes, whether through the ten windows of his Fo’castle (as he named his house) or outdoors at all hours of the day and night, whether on the beach, dune, or at the salt marsh, tinged the pleasure of my reading with an elegiac sadness.… (more)

Over the past couple of years, I've haunted New England used bookstores (in all five states, actually) in casual search, along with browsing, of Henry Beston's classic The Outermost House. It is, I find, a surprisingly scarce little book, given its high status as a classic of nature writing. Last week, I found this book, published by Brattleboro, Vermont's Stephen Greene Press in 1976, for sale at a used bookstore in downtown Rockland, Maine. It's a reader, with selection from a number of Mr. Beston's books (including those he wrote about his time in Damariscotta, Maine, just down the road from Rockland). I don't generally like readers; this one, however, earns five stars on the ethic it espouses in such gorgeous prose. Very highly recommended. It is time Henry Beston's voice is heard again in our mad and maddening world.… (more)

The author's 1928 account of the year he spent in an isolated house on the outer edge of Cape Cod. His emphasis is very much on the natural world around him there, including close observations of a wide array of seabirds and an extended attempt to capture the movements of the ocean in words. The human world is not entirely missing, either, however, as he was visited regularly by coast guard patrols: men who would walk the beach alone every night on the lookout for shipwrecks, which were numerous and terrible.

I found some parts of Beston's writing more engaging than others, but none of it is bad, and there are occasional passages that are impressively poetic (and that remain effective despite the introduction to 75th anniversary edition I read, which seems to be imitating the example of annoying movie trailers in its attempt to spoil all the best bits). Beston also has some profound and beautifully expressed thoughts on the the natural world as a whole, on its animal inhabitants as beings who exist on their own terms as much as any of us do, on the ways in which nature is so much bigger than humanity at the same time as we are within and a part of it, and on the rhythms of that world from which we disconnect only to our detriment.

I have no idea what this part of Cape Cod is like now, nearly a century later, but I can say that whatever might or might not have changed, this piece of writing still holds up and is still saying things that are just as relevant now as they were then.… (more)

I'm not sure how—being a naturalist of sorts who has spent a significant amount of time in coastal Massachusetts—that it is just now that I've become aware of this book. I came across it on the shelf at Everyone's Books in Brattleboro.

The premise: Beston, in his late thirties at the time, built a two-room cottage, two miles from the closest neighbor (the National Coast Guard), on the dunes of Eastham Beach on the Eastern outer banks of Cape Cod. This was in the 1920s. In September of 1926, Beston went out to the cottage, meaning to spend two weeks in retreat. Caught by the charm and magic of the place, he found he couldn't leave until a year had passed. His fiancé, Elizabeth Coatsworth, told him, "no book, no marriage." So over that winter he prepared his notes into a manuscript, and the book was published the following fall.

It is a tranquil book, short. The pages are split between Beston's time with the birds throughout the shifting seasons, and the Coast Guard—his human interlocutors throughout the year. When we first think of coastal wilderness, we think of the crash of the surf and the isolation. And then we remember—New England has incredible busy shipping and fishing routes. I recall a few days I spent sea kayaking Down East Maine; even as we were camping on various remote uninhabited islands, we'd awake each morning to the smell of diesel exhaust and the yell of of lobster fisherman checking their traps. Beston had a similar experience; half a dozen wrecks throughout his winter there, and numerous jaunts with members of the Coast Guard.

This book is credited with helping to inspire the conservation of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

The book has a very narrow scope, and is by no means a memoir, not speaking to any of Beston's interior. Apparently Beston saw the place as a psychological refuge to help his recovery from his service in World War I. What demons did he face in his cottage by the surf? This book does not say. Additionally, not once does he mention going for a swim down in the water, or speak about the books he was reading (I assume he was doing a lot of reading that year). So it does serve as a journal of his time there, but a very focused journal, which omits more than it includes. On the other hand, maybe this narrative focus contributed to the book's success.

If you thought a century back, the Cape was a pristine untouched wilderness, this book will set you straight! Although there wasn't nearly as much terrestrial development, apparently it was common practice to dump the sludge remaining from oil refining off the coast. Beston would collect oil-drenched sea birds, and attempt to nurse them back to health in his cottage. That said, there is no mention of ticks nor poison ivy, which I think are arrivals of the past century.

I also happen to be reading Iain McGilchrist's "The Matter With Things," about the differing worldviews of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The right hemisphere allows us to interact with depth and with change. In this book, Beston beautifully articulates something essential about the costal landscape. This essence is intertwined with its constantly shifting sands, tides, winds, weather, and wildlife. Each day Beston spent at his cottage was a new world—a new slope to the beach, a different sky, new wildlife passing through. This is the world as only the right hemisphere is able to experience it.… (more)