Henry Beston planned to spend only two weeks in his newly built cottage on the outer beach of Cape Cod. As summer drifted into autumn, however, he found himself so entranced by the landscape's rhythms and beauty that he could not bear to leave.

Settled in his isolated house facing the North Atlantic, Beston spent a year immersed in the raw, elemental life of the great beach around him. Observing the migrations of seabirds, savage winter storms and the constantly shifting interactions between sea and shore, he wrote of the passing seasons in ecstatic, riveting detail.

A highly influential classic of American nature writing, The Outermost House is a vital precursor to today's masters of the genre. Impassioned and richly layered, it is a matchless evocation of the spirit of a place and the enduring appeal of the wild.