Story pick: A man and his house

Covering the environment is a tough beat. The science is complicated. The debates can be nasty. The best environmental reporters find a way around all the complications by fusing science, keen observation of the world, and storytelling. The Post has one of these reporters -- David Fahrenthold -- and yesterday he had one of the best tales about the environment that I have ever read.

The story, Fahrenthold wrote, had all the makings of a child’s fable: “In an isolated section of the Chesapeake Bay, there was a two-story Victorian house that seemed to emerge directly from the water.” The house filled its owner, Stephen White, with pride as he spent more than a decade “trying to hold back the water, protecting the house's foundations with timbers and rocks and sandbags.”

But White was no match for nature. Rising oceans, sinking land -- he gave up. So did the house.