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

Lovely and fortifying.&Geologists estimate that Cape Cod will disappear in around 6,000 years.&Until it goes, may there continue to be writers as good as Mr. Finch to commemorate it.[Finch] is a keen and passionate observer.&[He] artfully conveys what is, at heart, so stirring about the beach: how its beauty and magisterial power cause us to ponder the larger things in life.A lovable book, full of high-leaping energy and charm. And Finch is great companywonderfully informed, observant, and funny. He gives us his leisured and warm friendship; he gives us his humor and enthusiasm. What astounding sights he meets just by wandering!Every step of this fifty-year journey is a lesson, a poem, a hypothesis, a paean, a keen stroke in a vivid seascape, a treatise, a fresh verse in an ongoing elegy.?With a scientists clarity and a storytellers wit, [Finch] tells of excursions taken over nearly half a century.& His prose carries the tang of salt, the gossip of gulls, the hiss of wind and surf. Open this book and you can venture out with him in all weathers, all seasonsbeachcombing, storm-chasing, birdwatchingall the while musing on the primordial dance between land and sea, and on the resilient creatures that live along the edge.A lyrical ode to one of the most unique places on earth.A master stylist, Finch is both a naturalist and a philosopher.& This beautiful book is to be savored in small bites by anyone yet to visit the Cape, and swallowed whole by those who love it as much as Finch does.The author chose John Keats remark, Description is always bad, as an epigraph for the book, but that comment surely does not apply to the precision and sheer loveliness of Finchs prose.&Vivid and graceful reflections on water and wind, shifting sands, and the inevitability of change.In rich and subtle detail, his portraits of the beach capture its ever-shifting elements.& Finch draws lessons on the impermanence of life from this settlement built on sand, lessons thl¶