I'll be presenting a special talk and multi-media presentation, “The Outermost House: An Eastham Story”, during Eastham’s Windmill Weekend.
The program will be held at the Eastham Historical Society’s 1869 Schoolhouse Museum, 25 Schoolhouse Road, on Saturday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m.
I've presented a variety of public talks about Beston’s literary classic and Cape Cod experiences since 2001, and will take a comprehensive localized look at Beston's ultimate Cape Cod experience. For those of you familiar with my "Henry Beston's Cape Cod" talk, this program will be more of an "Eastham-ized" version.
The talk will focus on Beston’s friendships with the men of the U.S. Coast Guard and the townspeople, the effect that the beach had on Beston’s recovery from his World War I experiences, the influence his book had on the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore, and the loss of “The Fo’castle” during the “Blizzard of ’78”. Several photographs of the house and its interior are also featured.
“Henry Beston was a remarkable man and influential beyond his own expectations,” The Barnstable Patriot wrote in 2003. “Don Wilding is due a lot of praise for obtaining comments and recollections of Beston by a number of individuals, mostly on the Cape, whose impressions would have been lost if the author’s energy and zeal hadn’t been harnessed to Beston’s star.”
I've written two books -- Henry Beston's Cape Cod: How The Outermost House Inspired a National Seashore and A Brief History of Eastham: On the Outer Beach of Cape Cod. I'm also a co-founder of the nonprofit Henry Beston Society and writer of the weekly “Shore Lore” history column for the Cape Codder.
The event is co-sponsored by the Eastham Historical Society and the Henry Beston Society.