Those who have encountered Cape Cod know that it is a singular place. In The Outer Beach, Robert Finch weaves together his collected writings from more than fifty years and more than a thousand miles of walking along Cape Cod's Atlantic coast to create a poignant, candid chronicle of an iconic landscape.

Dr. Wyman Richardson lived the life of a busy, and distinguished, physician, practicing in Boston and teaching at the Harvard Medical School, but here is recorded his other lifethe one closest to his heart. Cape Cod, and, more specifically, his humble farmhouse on Nauset Marsh, was his refuge. First published in 1947, The House on Nauset Marsh presaged later authors who discussed such subjects as the intelligence, language, and emotions of animals. His observances of fog, time, bird language, the wind and weather touch upon the philosophical. Little could escape Wyman Richardson's gaze in his activities and at restreflecting on the shifting moods of land and sea, the denizens of salt marshes and woods, and the personalities and stories of the Cape Codders of a gentler time.

For 30 years Mike Finch gave his total allegiance, his energy, his devotion, his dreams, and his love to Guru Maharaji (the Lord of the Universe, Prem Rawat). He also gave Maharaji and his organizations two inheritances, a house, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. As Maharaji's former chauffeur Mike was close to him personally; he lived as a renunciate in Maharaji's ashrams, and was authorized to reveal Maharaji's secret teachings. The book is a narrative of Mike's time with Maharaji, and his struggle to surrender his life to Maharaji, and to achieve the liberation that Maharaji promised.

It is a story of being confined within a rigid belief system, realizing it, and learning how to break out from it. It is a story of how he came to live, think, feel, behave, and love, without 'the Guru', meaning both Maharaji, as the actual guru in his life; and in a more general sense of learning to face oneself and the world without any intermediary or negotiator, of any kind, in between.

Recommendation from Steve Hassan

I have recently made the time to finally read this fine book, although I was sent a review copy over a year ago. I am glad that Mike followed up and sent me another copy, and that we had the chance to sit down for lunch, along with a brief addition of his lovely life-partner Gail.

I have been doing my 'work' of helping former members and raising awareness since I left my own involvement with the Unification Church (yes, the Moonies) back in 1976. I say this here, because it is rare that I get to learn from a fellow traveler, a former member from another totalistic group, with insights and perspectives that dovetail with some of my own conclusions, but from a somewhat different orientation.

I heartily recommend this book for people to read. Not just former members of Guru Maharaji (aka Prem Rawat), not just former members of other eastern 'guru' groups, nor even other cult groups of every shape size and orientation. It is a book that the general public can benefit from reading - especially the last fifty or so pages. I also think people who have been devoted to a religion of any kind who have left it would find this insightful - but particularly former long term members of high demand groups and cults.

In my cult experience, my recruitment and indoctrination to have utter and complete belief in Sun Myung Moon as the Lord of the Universe paralleled Mike Finch's. They achieved my total submission to Moon and his beliefs and practices and organization within a few months. I dropped out of college, donated my bank account, turned my back on poetry, art, my family, friends to work for the Messiah and to 'save the world.' I was prepared to die or be killed for Moon. I was also absolutely sure I would spend the rest of my life doing his 'will.' That ended abruptly when I fell asleep while driving a fundraising van, and my family did an intervention and rescued me. When I learn about Lifton and brainwashing, Jonestown and other cults - like Scientology, Krishna, TM, Children of God, DLM - it became clear that all of these groups were deceptively recruiting and using social influence techniques and other mind control methods to enslave people. And so I began my crusade which has lasted these several decades.

Mike Finch: He walked out on his own, with the help and prodding of his life-partner Gail, who had woken up herself to the realization that not only was Maharaji not the Lord incarnate, but also that he was extremely abusive and harmful. She helped him see what he knew from his experience was true.

This book, and his web site where he continues his exploration, restarts his life and continues to evolve, surely is a very important guide for the multitudes of people who are still in cult groups after twenty or thirty years. He also offers them hope, that you can come out, and reclaim your personal power and move forward.

Read this book and share it with others

Steve Hassan

Essays by Cape Cod nature writer Robert Finch, inviting the reader to enjoy special places on the landscape of Cape Cod and the Islands.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Beloved Nature Writer Robert Finch spent the greater part of a decade traveling around the island of Newfoundland, at "the edge of North America." In these evocative sketches, stories, and essays, he explores the people, geography, and wildlife of a remote and lovely, but often dangerously inhospitable place. Between the icy cliffs and the Atlantic Ocean, the lush valleys and barren drifts, he collects intimate stories of birds and moose and foxes--and of the people who share their space. He evokes a landscape of raw beauty in detailed essays that ebb and flow as we make the journey with him, straining to hear the waves. But while Newfoundland may be a place of unparalleled beauty, its citizens face serious economic hardships, with the fishing industry withered and very little industry to replace it. Finch often steps aside, allowing the Newfoundlanders' to tell their stories in their own voices, and allows us to her the cadence and movement of individuals and their tales. A wide array of characters--fishermen, hunters, and hitchhikers, newcomers and oldtimers--bring to life an island tucked between provinces, languages, and cultures, a land of ancient hardship and stirring beauty.

He writes about the challenges faced to become a computer scientist, about denials/promotions in a world that did everything to keep people of color from participating intellectually. Intertwined within were personal relationships, especially with the opposite sex, which were impediments to his growth. "Glass Ceiling" and the "Illusions of Inclusion" are degradations he encountered along the way in the racist world in which he strived. He also tells about the "good jobs, " as people of color referred to them then.

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.

A Natural History Guide to Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island, and Long Island

Illustrated by Winifred Lubell
Foreword by Robert Finch

Did you know that horseshoe crabs have been around for 200 million years? That mussels "spin" long anchor lines and climb steep slopes with them? Do you know what a "Beetlebung" tree is?

This is all part of Dorothy Sterling's fascinating description of The Outer Lands, and the plants and animals that inhabit this penninsula and chain of islands along our New England coast.

"This book belongs in the hands of anyone who has ever been even remotely curious about the myriad forms of teeming organisms that surround us." —The Cape

"An extraordinary achievement in natural history and science. But it's so artfully written you forget it's a scientific treatise and find yourself reading it with sheer pleasure." —Provincetown Advocate

"This lovely volume will never leave my library shelves until I again enter the enchanted land it describes." —Los Angeles Herald Examiner

This anthology has a double aim: to present a body of poetry, none of it easily available, some of it never before reproduced, and to point up a particular trend, until now nearly lost sight of in the maze of generalizations about eighteenth-century French poetry. This trend, called individualist, in contradistinction to the academic and universalist trends of the century, has been chosen since it is the least known and most original of the three. The individualist poets are avowed moderns, and their attitude toward poetry and their concept of its nature often anticipate attitudes held by our poets of our own time. There has not been available to this point a sufficiently representative body of poems by these poets, a gap that Professors Finch and Joliat have attempts to fill with their anthology. Readers will find the notes to the poems especially useful, since many of them provide out-of-the-way background material and, as well, offer new insights into the poetry of the individualist poets as a group.

It has long been the custom to condemn eighteenth-century French poetry outright as generally unworthy of attention. However, in keeping with a recent change of attitude towards this vast and diverse body of literature, Professor Finch here undertakes to isolate a certain group of poets, belonging to the first half of the century, who may appropriately be called individualistes and who are in various ways characteristic of a definite and important trend of their time. The authors he has chosen were selected from the larger group of individualists because each provides, in addition to his poems, a complete statement of his own conception of poetry and of that conception which is common to the group as a whole. Since the works treated are comparatively unfamiliar the author has considered them from a historical and an analytical as well as a critical point of view. In addition he has devoted three special chapters to a literary historian (Evrard Titon du Tillet) and to three critical theorists (Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Yves-Marie Andre, and Charles Batteux) whose contemporary writings, while they may or may not have influenced the poets here examined, support, reflect, or confirm their ideas and practice. Texts of these poets are not easily available and the numerous representative quotations from the poems given in this book will be welcomed by the reader.

When Common Ground was first published, Annie Dillard praised Robert Finch's essays for "their strength, subtlety, and above all their geniality." New readers will have a chance to discover that Finch's Cape Cod is indeed a wonderful place. The birds, fish, and animals that share the cape's fragile ecology on any given summer day with the human residents are described with the fresh eye of a first-rate nature writer.

In a unique collaboration between words and images, The Cape Itself illuminates the polymorphic and often contradictory nature of the Cape: a place which epitomizes both the 'human scale' of a gentle, accessible landscape, and the chaotic, overwhelming presence of the sea; a place increasingly swamped and obscured by crowds and development, yet still affording surprising opportunities for wonder and discovery. It is precisely the interaction between these two creative modes of expression, reflecting and commenting on each other, which results in a personal, yet broadly evocative portrait of one of the most fascinating landscapes and communities in this country.

This is a voyage of discovery, a personal odyssey into the nature of a single Cape Cod neighborhood. It is a rich portrait, beautifully drawn, of a landscape and a community whose essential character lies in their penetrating interface with the sea. But it is also an individual quest, a journey of the heart and mind in which the author seeks "entrance, or rather re-entrance" into "that vast living maze stretching out beyond my lines of sight."