The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore

The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore

by Robert Finch
The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore

The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore

by Robert Finch

Hardcover

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Overview

A poignant, candid chronicle of a beloved nature writer’s fifty-year relationship with an iconic American landscape.

Those who have encountered Cape Cod—or merely dipped into an account of its rich history—know that it is a singular place. Robert Finch writes of its beaches: “No other place I know sears the heart with such a constant juxtaposition of pleasure and pain, of beauty being born and destroyed in the same moment.” And nowhere within its borders is this truth more vivid and dramatic than along the forty miles of Atlantic coast—what Finch has always known as the Outer Beach. The essays here represent nearly fifty years and a cumulative thousand miles of walking along the storied edge of the Cape’s legendary arm.

Finch considers evidence of nature’s fury: shipwrecks, beached whales, towering natural edifices, ferocious seaside blizzards. And he ponders everyday human interactions conducted in its environment with equal curiosity, wit, and insight: taking a weeks-old puppy for his first beach walk; engaging in a nocturnal dance with one of the Cape’s fabled lighthouses; stumbling, unexpectedly, upon nude sunbathers; or even encountering out-of-towners hoping an Uber will fetch them from the other side of a remote dune field.

Throughout these essays, Finch pays tribute to the Outer Beach’s impressive literary legacy, meditates on its often-tragic history, and explores the strange, mutable nature of time near the ocean. But lurking behind every experience and observation—both pivotal and quotidian—is the essential question that the beach beckons every one of its pilgrims to confront: How do we accept our brief existence here, caught between overwhelming beauty and merciless indifference?

Finch’s affable voice, attentive eye, and stirring prose will be cherished by the Cape’s staunch lifers and erstwhile visitors alike, and strike a resounding chord with anyone who has been left breathless by the majestic, unrelenting beauty of the shore.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393081305
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 05/09/2017
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Robert Finch has lived on Cape Cod for forty years, currently in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. He is the author of seven collections of essays, most recently of his radio scripts for his weekly commentary, “A Cape Cod Notebook,” on the Cape and Islands NPR Station, WCAI.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A View From The Beach xv

1 Beginnings 1

2 Monomoy 13

3 North Beach / Pleasant Bay / Pochet 41

4 Nauset Beach 97

5 Nauset Marsh 107

6 Coast Guard Beach 125

7 Nauset Light Beach 145

8 Marconi Beach 163

9 LeCount Hollow to Cahoon Hollow 171

10 Newcomb Hollow 197

11 Ballston Beach to Higgins Hollow 243

12 Long Nook to Head of the Meadow 259

11 The Provincelands 273

14 Long Point 309

L'Envoi: The Rain of Time 325

Acknowledgments 329

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