THE OUTERMOST HOUSE: A Year of Life...

THE OUTERMOST HOUSE: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston (Henry Holt: $9.95) and THE OUTER LANDS: A Natural History Guide to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island and Long Island by Dorothy Sterling, illustrated by Winifred Lubell ($12.95). Although he originally planned to stay only two weeks, Henry Beston spent a year alone in the cottage he called Fo’Castle (near Eastam, on the Cape Cod peninsula) during the late 1920s. Based on the journal he kept there, “The Outermost House” celebrates the beauties of the easternmost point of the United States, “the last defiant bulwark of two worlds.” Believing that “The world of to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot,” he chronicles the annual pageant of nature, from the savage gales that rake the Cape to the tiny tracks left by insects in the sand, in terms that recall the poetry of Walt Whitman. Fo’Castle remained a pilgrimage site for nature enthusiasts until an exceptionally fierce winter storm washed it away in 1978: All that survived was the plaque designating its landmark status and Beston’s sage admonition, “Do no dishonour to the earth lest you dishonor the spirit of man.” Sterling offers a pleasantly informal introduction to the flora, fauna and landforms of the region Beston praised. Although separated by man-made political divisions, the “outer lands” form a single geophysical unit created by glaciation during last Ice Age. The peninsulas and scattered islands are remnants of the moraines and outwash plains that marked the edges of the ice sheets; they form a unique environmental community that is still being shaped by the Atlantic tides and human activities. Lubell’s watercolor and ink illustrations provide an adequate supplement to the text, but seem less effective than photographs.