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Watchingoveralegacy
Tellingthe storyof HenryBestonandthe OutermostHouse
By EllenC.Chahey
arts@barnstablepatriot.com
HENRY BESTON SOCIETYARCHIVES
FINDING HEALING ATTHE SHORE- Henry Beston inthe mid- W
k
1920s
NITAWILDING PHOTO
FOLLOWINGTHESTORY-DonWildingat Nauset Marsh/Coast GuardBeach,Eastham.
In
1996 or so, Don Wilding recalled, he and his wife
first visited Provincetown. Two things happened on
their trip: they fell in love with the seashore, and
they bought two books about this peninsula so newly
discovered by them.
Henry Thoreau's Cape Cod was one of them, and it
was "okay," said Wilding, but then his wife said of the
other, "You'll love this book."
She was talking about Henry Beston's The Outermost
House.
"Thisisit,"Wildingrememberedthinkingof theBeston
book. "This is the real thing."
Then Wilding learned that The OutermostHouse,which
Beston wrotein 1928 about a year that he lived in a cabin
on the ocean side of the Lower Cape, became a major
factor in the establishment of the Cape Cod National
Seashore.It also inspired environmentalistRachel Carson
to do her own writing.
Now Wilding, on behalf of the Henry Beston Society,
willpresent aprogramat the OstervilleVillageLibraryon
Friday,July 18, at 4:30p.m. about "Henry Beston's Cape
Cod: How 'The Outermost House' Inspired a National
Seashore." Wilding has written a book of the same title,
which will be for sale at the library.
His lecturewill include more than 150 slides as well
as some rough-cut footage from a documentary that
Christopher Seufert of Chatham is making based on
Wilding's book.
The slides come from the collection of Nan Turner
Waldron, who died in 2000 and who left him her col-
lection asif "passing the torch," said Wilding. "She was
my 'outermost' guru."
Beston,originallyfromQuincyand born in 1888, came
to theCape as a route to healing from the horrorshe had
.seen in World War I. Because his mother's homeland
was France, he spoke fluent French. When the hostili-
ties of the warbegan, and evenbefore the United States
was involved, Beston volunteeredto drivean ambulance
in France, where he saw "the worst of the worst," said
Wilding, such as the bloody front lines at Verdun.Later,
Beston, as a journalist, covered the naval war.
But,ashappens for manycombatveterans,thehorrible
effects of warwaitedtohauntBestonuntilhe camehome.
Now, said Wilding, Beston had to deal with his painful
memoriesat thesametime that he wastrying
to find himself as a writer.
At this point in Beston's life, said Wilding,
Cape Cod enters the picture. Beston was em-
ployed to write a magazine story about coast
guardsmen. "He was taken by the Cape,"
Wilding said. "He recognized peril, and he
wouldtakewalkswith"themenwhotraversed
the shores looking for ships foundering on
the shoals and riskingthen own lives to saw
sailors. And sohe chose to brave a year alone
in the cottage, where he kept a pot of coffee
on at night in case a lifesaverwould drop by
to warm up.
"Every night they go; every night of the
year the eastern beaches see the comings and
ONTHE COVER
goingsof the wardens of Cape Cod. Winter and summer
they pass and repass, now through the midnight sleet
and fury of a great northeaster, now through August
quiet and the reddish-golden radiance of an old moon
rising after midnightfrom thesea, now through a world
of rain shaken with heavy thunder and stabbed through
and through with lighting," wrote Beston.
''Henry Beston was heavily inspirational in a spiritual
sense"inthe creation of the National Seashore, Wilding
said, and infact, "the spiritualfather."Wildingnoted that
JonathanMoore of thelate Sen.LeveTett Saltenstall'sof-
fice used The OutermostHouse "all the time" to persuade
congressionalrepresentativestovoteto savethe seashore.
The Outermost House itself was destroyed in a storm
in 1978.
Tolearnmoreabout Beston and hisyearat the seashore,
come to Osterville on July 18. Other options are July 29
at 6 p.m. at the Provincetown Public Library;Aug. 15 at
7p.m. at theGreenbriarNature Center inEast Sandwich;
and Aug.19 at the Mashpee Public Library.
The Beston Society's website is henrybeston.org and Wild-
ing's book Henry Beston'
s Cape Cod: How The Outermost House
Inspired a National Seashore, is available at Amazon.com
ONTHE COVER
NANTURNERWALDRON/HENRY BESTONSOCIETYARCHIVES
NOTHING BETWEENIT ANDTHE ATLANTIC- The
outermostbouse,circalate1960s/early70s