Death of a Hornet and Other Cape Cod Essays

by Finch, Robert

• ISBN13: 9781582431383
• ISBN10: 1582431388
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-23
• Publisher: Counterpoint

Summary

Essays on the natural history of the Cape Cod region document changes in the environment, and in the author's life.

Spanning more than 20 years, these essays record changes not only in the natural environment of Cape Cod but in the writer's own life. Death of a Hornet is one man's elegant rendering of Cape Cod, a sandy, scrub-oaked, tough, and vulnerable spit of land reaching out into the Atlantic Ocean. These stories are natural adventures that Finch's previous readers have come to expect, as well as longer meditations on the future of the Cape's fragile environment, on living in one place for a long time, and on the limitations of human sympathy.

Author Biography

Widely regarded as one of America's leading nature writers, Robert Finch has lived on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, since 1971. He has published seven books of essays and is co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
I. BREWSTER
Death of a Hornet	3	(5)
A Winter Burial	8	(4)
Words and Music	12	(4)
Shadow on the Pond	16	(5)
Phoebe Journal	21	(12)
The Kindest Cut	33	(3)
Bird's Eye View	36	(5)
Watery Love	41	(4)
Dressing a Swan	45	(5)
A Missionary Among Moonjellies	50	(5)
A Lower-case Walk	55	(6)
September Song	61	(5)
A Marginal Species	66	(9)
Dark Visions in a Field	75	(4)
Leaffall	79	(5)
Saving the Whales	84	(9)
Brave New World	93	(4)
The Times of Their Lives	97	(5)
A Visigoth in the Study	102	(4)
Big Bone Lick	106	(5)
Snowplow	111	(6)
The Once and Future Cape	117	(9)
A Town Ghost	126	(11)
II. WELLFLEET
Barren Ground	137	(5)
A Night on the Slopes	142	(4)
Seeing the Light	146	(5)
Outer Beach Endgame	151	(4)
On the Killing Fields	155	(11)
Mind in the Sky	166	(4)
Trickle-down Ecology	170	(7)
Fishing on the Common	177	(4)
Dancing with Lights	181	(5)
Long Nook	186	(4)
War Story	190	(6)
An Eclipse	196	(4)
Off Hours	200	(5)
Blackberrying in Africa	205	(6)
A Day of Roads	211	(14)
Ghost Music on the Dunes	225	(5)
A Terrible Beauty	230	(6)
Special Delivery	236	(5)
``This Living Hand...''	241	(7)
Nothing But Net	248	(8)
Sometimes I Live in Town	256	(13)
Acknowledgments	269