The Great Beach

by John Hay

“The Cape will probably never have a better celebrant than Hay, and it will probably never again serve as such a perfect metaphor for our present exquisite tension between the guaranteed traditional warmths of the hearth and the cold outer reaches of science.” ― New York Review of Books Cape Cod’s vast outer coast, named The Great Beach by Henry David Thoreau, is little changed since the Pilgrim’s first landfall almost 350 years ago. Today a plane can skim its fifty miles in a matter of seconds, and in the summer bathing areas are so crowded with cars and people they take on a continental flavor. But the long, desolate, windswept stretches can still be found, and the National Park Service has been taking steps to preserve the original character of the beach and its rolling dunes back from the water, designating it a National Seashore.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction

156 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1971

About the author

John Hay (August 31, 1915, Ipswich, Massachusetts – February 26, 2011, Bremen, Maine was an American author, naturalist, and conservation activist. Hay co-founded the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, Massachusetts and served as its president from 1955 to 1980. He composed 18 books from his "writing shack" on Dry Hill at his home in Brewster, Massachusetts, including two autobiographies, A beginner's faith in things unseen (1995) and Mind the Gap: The Education of a Nature Writer. (2004).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ha...

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who loves Cape Cod needs to include The Great Beach as a must read along with Thoreau, Beston, and I would add Richardson. Hay himself acknowledges that writing about the Cape is difficult in light of his predecessors. But each of them write from a different time and perspective, and all have value.

From the Foreword:
“But the great beach is the center of greater changes besides which ours are lost in the tides. Sand, storm, and the great waters define it. Its forty-mile strip of white sands is only temporarily occupied by its human visitors. We are still just that and no more, visitors, obliged to move off at high tide, or forcibly kept from it during a northeast storm by its violent, elemental reactions. In spite of the beach buggies and campers that occupy the beach at various times of the year, it is hardly a highway in the common use of the term. We cannot really be said to own it. It is uninhabitable, still unconquered. Stand on top of its fragile cliffs and you have the whole sky around you, coming in with influences from all points of the compass. The open plains of the Atlantic roam with a wilderness light, and you are back with one of those high places on the continent that still offer you original space, the right scale and proportion for life on earth.”

Anyone that has been to Cape Cod and experienced the great or outer beach along the Atlantic ocean knows this to be true. Hay writes of all aspects of the Great Beach. Despite his pessimism, his love of this place and the nature that inhabits it is apparent.

“The history of Cape Cod is fairly well known. I say fairly well because I do not see how it is possible to recapture the deep complexities of what was present and now is past, although there is enough past left in us to provide great confusion about the times we have to face. Many tourists run after "charm" or what is "quaint," terms which are slight enouph to admit that they have very little to do with the dark realities of three centuries. Now we come and go in great bounds, from great distances. Motion and change make our constancies. We are in no need of staying put. We are attracted by the starlight in the heavens we have created for ourselves. We look on the earth's great flowing beauties with an inclined eye. For all its “conquest of nature," perhaps because of it, our civilization has a tenuous hold on the waters and lands it occupies. We are in danger of being overlords, not obligated to what we rule.”

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naturalist John Hay writes eloquently about Cape Cod in this book with such vivid descriptions I could almost see the wind swept beach and swelling waves of the sea.

Here are a few quotes to give you an idea of his writing style. "The sea sparkles, and explodes with light where the sun strikes it directly. The spilling waves make small white accents along the shore." "Clouds like heaps of spun silk float up across the sky."

He gives a very detailed account even down to the tiniest grains of sand on the beach and the diatoms in the sea. Also, birders would probably really enjoy this book as there are many mentions of birds sprinkled throughout the book and a whole chapter dedicated to them.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love John Hay's writing, especially his work from the early 1960s at the start of the modern environmental movement. Hay's concerns about modernity and the over development of Cape Cod are increasingly relevant with each passing year. While much of the Cape has changed in the fifty years since this publication, thankfully the National Seashore allows one to explore many of the wild places Hay wrote about.

[Mark Mortensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author John Hay (Harvard 38’) was a naturalist writer and as a Cape Cod resident he served for a period of time as president of the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. His book “The Great Beach” published in 1963 complements the Cape Cod writings of Thoreau and Beston. Years ago I had the pleasure of meeting the books illustrator David Grose, who kindly autographed my copy.

Cape Cod, formed over 21,000 years ago continues to evolve with time. Much of the Great Beach is depicted through the National Seashore Park around Nauset, Coast Guard and Monomoy Beaches. From the early 1950’s until the early 1980’s I spent a least two weeks a year on the Cape and even lived there year-round for a couple of consecutive years. Hay’s descriptive words allow me to escape today’s fast paced electric culture by drifting back and reminiscing with the peninsula’s natural surroundings. Forget the souvenir, fudge and antique shops. The only bars mentioned in the book are the irregular flat sandy slits protruding offshore. Mentioned rather are isolated thickets bayberry, beach plumbs and wild roses, dispersed among beach grass on the 60-170 foot cliffs overlooking the vast ocean as far as one can see into the horizon. Depending upon the time of year and weather conditions, down at the waters edge one might experience crashing surf with salt spray or stillness accompanied by rhythmic gentle lapping waves.

Moving inland Hay observes different animal and bird species from the mud flats and brackish marshes to the crystal fresh water ponds. He notes the abundant common scrub pines that are clustered throughout the inland areas. The tree is considered worthless as the wood is not good for furniture and certainly no resident today would intentionally pant such a relatively unattractive tree in their yard, yet the dwarf pine tree leaves its mark as a nesting location for nature and serves as a visual backdrop throughout the Cape. Hay’s nature book allows one to reflect upon the Cape without physically traveling.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1963, John Hay describes the sea, the beach, the plant life and the animals on Cape Cod in rather wondrous ways. This is a classic I found in several bibliographies of current books on natural history. I'm glad I found it online and took the time to read it.

[Bender · Rating 3 out of 5]

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