The Outermost House : A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (1928) - Henry Beston

Written by Henry Beston
Read by Brett Barry
Format: MP3

· Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
· Release date: 05-11-07
· Publisher: Silver Hollow Audio Inc.

In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, “I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go.”

Beston stayed for a year, meditating on humanity and the natural world. In The Outermost House , originally published in 1928, he poetically chronicled the four seasons at the beach; the ebb and flow of the tides, the migration of birds, storms, stars, and solitude. The landscape was his major character, and his writing provides a snapshot of the Cape, a place physically changed yet as soulful 80 years later. Like Henry D. Thoreau before him, and Rachel Carson after him, Beston was a writer of stunning beauty, importance and vision. Robert Finch once wrote of him, “His are burnished, polished sentences, richly metaphoric and musical, that beg to be read aloud.”

“In 1925, Henry Beston built a small house on Cape Cod and spent a year there with minimal human contact. His reflection on the experience, THE OUTERMOST HOUSE, is a revered part of Cape Cod’s literary history. Brett Barry shines as the voice of Beston, a naturalist. Barry’s narration captures the poetry of Beston’s lyrical passages, in which he expresses views on wildlife and conservation that are decades ahead of their time. While some of Beston’s descriptions are in the vein of a field guide, others are wise and moving. This production is best listened to during a walk through one’s own favorite natural retreat.” — AudioFile