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Bookish Quotes
"A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic."
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
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The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
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This Book is Currently in the Wild!
5 journalers for this copy...
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Journal Entry 1 by 
One of Rachel Carson's favorite books, which is enough of a recommendation, written in long hand "on the kitchen table overlooking the North Atlantic and the dunes, the little room full of the yellow sunlight reflected from the sands and the great sound of the sea."The Outermost Web Site Pre-numbered label used for registration. |
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Journal Entry 2 by
When I began to read this book, I grabbed a bookmark from a pile, and fortuitously took the one that has on it a poem entitled "Ocean Poem".Henry Beston built a small house atop a dune on Eastham bar, his nearest neighbors the coast guard at Nauset, two miles away. Going there in September with the intention of spending a fortnight, he lingered, "the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go." So he stayed for a year. This is the journal of that year. A good nature writer must be a good observer, and Beston certainly was. He paid attention. To the "tracks of hungry crows . . . the webbed impressions of a gull", the sound of the ocean, the shape of a wave, the swarming of butterflies. He made me smell the ocean, feel the tide and sand between my toes. He teaches the beauty and the danger, as he writes of the shipwrecks that winter, of a deer trapped in the freezing water, the bravery of the Coast Guard. Nature gives us lovely things, but she takes her due. And he writes of the dangers caused by men: "A new danger, moreover, now threatens the birds at sea. An irreducible residue of crude oil, called by refiners "slop," remains still after oil distillation, and this is pumped into southbound tankers and emptied far offshore. This wretched pollution floats over large area, and the birds light in it and get it on their feathers. They inevitably die." Things haven't changed. An unexpected gift. At one point, Beston is describing "sea horses", "waves rolling in fighting a strong breeze . . . the manes of white, sun brilliant spray streaming behind them for thirty and even forty feet . . . If you would see them at their best, come to this beach on a bright October day when a northwest wind is billowing off to sea across the moors." And someone (perhaps Martha Chester, whose name is written on the cover?) has written in the margin, "We did! Oct. 12, '63". I leave you with his closing words, take them to heart: "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." I have just seen on the Outermost Web Site that 2004 is the 40th Anniversary of The Outermost House being declared a National Literary Landmark. I think I shall have to find a way to send this book home. |
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Journal Entry 3 by
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Journal Entry 4 by
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Journal Entry 5 by 
Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity. As I once said elsewhere, "Man can either be less than man or more than man, and both are monsters the last more dread."I've actually been in Eastham, on a visit to BCer greedyreader, but did not know at the time that that was the setting of this book. The house was washed out to sea by a storm in 1978, but I'd have liked to go stand on the beach where it used to be. Since I do want to go to the Cape again - still haven't visited the Edward Gorey house! - perhaps I'll take this book along and release it close to home. Thanks, mojosomom! |
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Journal Entry 6 by
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Released 7 yrs ago (2/14/2005 UTC) at Perry, NY, Post Office in M-bag to New Zealand, M-bag to New Zealand -- Controlled Releases WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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Journal Entry 9 by
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Released 6 yrs ago (2/11/2006 UTC) at Albatross Colony, Tairoa Head in Dunedin, Otago New Zealand WILD RELEASE NOTES:
RELEASE NOTES: Left on a seat near the cliff track below the Royal Albatross centre, I had been meaning to leave this book there and this was the first opportunity I have had. Next week we are taking a car load of NZ bookcrossing convention visitors to the same place so we thought we would do a trip today in preparation. Happy reading to the finder... |
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