It all started with Henry Thoreau. A great nature lover, he visited Cape Cod in the mid-1800s, and fell in love with the awesome natural beauty of the Outer Beach. He frequented Nauset Light and commented on the lonely life of its keeper. Legend has it that he stayed in the little fishing shanty right on the shore gathering material for this 1865 classic Cape Cod.His book no doubt inspired Henry Beston, who became Cape Cod's champion beach shack devotee. In his 20s, Beston was a dapper, witty editor for the Atlantic Monthly in New York. He made several visits to Cape Cod and in 1925, he gave up his career and designed a small 2-room cottage to be built on his parcel of Eastham dunes. He intended to spend a summer there, but stayed a whole year, and wrote his masterpiece The Outermost House, published in 1928. Even more than Thoreau's book, this account of life on the Outer Beach and the world of Nauset captured the essence of Cape Cod for millions of readers. In 1929, Beston married and moved to Maine, and the cottage, christened "The Fo'c'sle", was lent to Audubon birders and naturalists until 1959 when he donated it to the Audubon Society.

Shortly thereafter, a young woman interested in studying shore birds contracted to rent the Fo'c'sle for a brief stay. Nauset worked its irresistible magic on her, too, and after 16 years of a joyful immersion in the world of Henry Beston, Nan Turner Waldron wrote the enchanting Journey to the Outermost House in 1991. Her book describes the eventual fate of the house as it was swept to sea in the frothy fury of the Blizzard of '78.

But back to Thoreau for a moment. A hundred and twenty-five years after he walked the Cape's Atlantic shore, his little cottage sat abandoned on the edge of the National Seashore's domain, about to be swallowed up by the ever-encroaching sea.

The notice that it was for sale caught the eye of an imaginative Chatham carpenter with a penchant for the water. Peter Mason negotiated a deal with the interior department for $1, and purchased a barge as the shack's new seaworthy foundation. He put his carpentry talents to work building a deck, adding two motors and carving dragon heads in the woodwork. Palm trees in the corners added just the right touch of tropical decorum, and Skipper Mason floats along the east coast doing various corporate promotions and living a unique lifestyle - perhaps a new breed of Thoreau of the 90s.