By Robert D. Woodward

Eastham, Mass.--Early morning on Friday, July 25, 1997, I set out on a pilgrimage to the place on a Cape Cod beach where the great naturalist Henry Beston gathered material to write his classic book, "The Outermost House."

I was one of the few people on the beach that morning. Tropical storm Danny had brought rough weather to the Cape, and the sea was crashing on the shores with 20- to 25-foot waves. Rain was falling intermittently. I walked south along the beach from the Coast Guard Beach lighthouse to the place where Beston's house once sat. A winter storm in 1978 destroyed the house that he had built in the 1920s--a house that sat on the easternmost point of the United States.

Amidst the storm on that Friday morning, I could imagine Beston in earlier times on a sunny day in October 1926 when he noted the migration of monarch butterflies along the seashore. His book contains several pages of observations that document the continuity of the flight of the monarchs. He noted, "Their movements were as casual as the wind, yet there was an unmistakable southerly pull drawing them on."

"I imagine they were in search of food," he wrote. "Between half-past twelve and half-past one, they melted away as mysteriously as they had come, and with them went the last echo of summer and the high sun from the dunes."

More than 70 years have passed since Beston noted the monarchs migrating on Cape Cod, but on a stormy summer morning in 1997, I could picture him there on the beach observing the beauty of the monarchs' passing.