Beston birthday celebrated this weekend
Banner Daily Update posted Thurs. May 31
By Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
Who that has read “The Outermost House” by Henry Beston can forget his vivid descriptions of shorebirds coming and going, tides revising the beach on a daily basis, Neptune rising over the sea and rogue waves crashing in the night? When Beston moved into his two-room cottage on the Eastham sand dunes for a year in 1926 to chronicle four seasons on the beach, few could have guessed that the little book he would write would be compared with the likes of “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold and other esteemed works of nature writing. His cottage, the Fo’castle, was even declared a National Literary Landmark before it was swept away by a winter storm in 1978.
This week, on the occasion of Beston’s June 1 birthday, Mass. Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, the Henry Beston Society and Silver Hollow Audio are preparing a special event. Silver Hollow is publishing the first-ever audiobook of “The Outermost House,” unabridged, on Friday. And on Saturday, June 2, at the sanctuary, Dr. Daniel G. Payne, a Beston biographer who is interviewed on the audiobook, will speak about Beston’s life and work. The audiobook’s narrator, Brett Barry, also will read selections from the classic, and Don Wilding of the Henry Beston Society will talk about the society’s efforts to build a reproduction of Beston’s 20-by-16-ft. Fo’castle.
Copies of the audiobook will be available for purchase, and light refreshments will be served. The cost of the program is $5 for Mass. Audubon members and $7 for non-members. For more information or to register, call the sanctuary at (508) 349-2615.
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May 31st, 2007