Henry Beston’s Outermost House (1970s photo).
(Photo by Nan Turner Waldron)

“Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness of that divine mystery man ceases to be man”

Henry Beston

In  1974, I was a kid in middle school complaining about the book my English teacher had just assigned.  “The Outermost House: A Year Of Life On The Great Beach Of Cape Cod” is an American classic, written by Henry Beston, a naturalist and writer.

After WWI, Beston needed time to himself, after living throught the terrible experience of war. He retreated to the outer beach in Eastham, MA.  He lived there alone for one year and wrote about the seashore and its natural surrounding beauty.

I was in 5th grade in 1974, boarding a bus with my English class. Our destination was the Cape Cod National Seashore. Why were we going?  Our teacher wanted us to see the Outermost House” and study the sea life and ecosystem. Being pre teens, we all thought it sounded like a boring trip, but it turned out to be one of my favorite school trips .

Built in 1925, the house was located two miles south of the Nauset Coast Guard Station and sat by itself alone with the Atlantic and Nauset Marsh, it’s only neighbors. I remember walking the beach and collecting seashells with classmates until we approached the house. We all started to slow down and point to it, “There it is!” we shouted, like we had just spotted Moby Dick.

When the teacher nodded, we all started to run. Once on the porch, shoving matches started for positioning to see inside the foggy windows. The house was boarded up and in need of repair.  Its run down condition was due to the harsh winter storms and by sitting out in the open stretch of beach.

It  wasn’t at all what I had expected. It was much smaller and positioned on a lonelier spot than I had imagined from reading the book. Then the teacher noticed the boys wrestling on the porch and called us to gather around her, forming a circle, on the sand. We were told not to move, to close our eyes and listen. The boys were silly at first, and the girls giggled quietly, but then everyone did as  they had been told.

We hadn’t noticed while pushing each other on the porch, but now sitting quietly, we discovered the quiet sounds of beach. The wind’s  whirring, the gulls calling, the ocean crashing, and the sea grass whistling…simply magical. It was exactly like Beston had described in his book.  Henry Beston wrote in a simple style and eloquently put into words what every environmentalist knows. Nature is to be honored.

“It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honour nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.”

Jimmy Carter quotes

From time to time, my dad would comment after reading in the local paper that they moved Beston’s house again.  The house had been moved several times in an attempt to protect it from erosion and sea. 

Then the Blizzard of 1978 hit.

High tides swept over the beach and claimed the house. Since then, all the original locations of where the house had stood, have been replaced by Atlantic Ocean. It’s only a memory now, but when I skim through his book and capture clips of his writing, the house becomes real to me again.         Thank you Henry Beston.

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