Book Excerpt

Foreword by John Pearce, author of Heart of the Pines

The New Jersey pinelands, with the Pine Barrens as its core, is one of the most fascinating places on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It doesn’t have gorgeous mountain vistas or expanses of ocean stretching out to the sunrise, but it is enchanting nevertheless.

Deep within the “barrens” are dark swamps, sand roads that have been traversed since the early days of settlement and some even before that, little rivers that would be called creeks anywhere else that flow with the dark and silky tannin-stained waters of the lowland swamps. In night’s obscurity, the camper and hiker finds a taste of the fear with which early Europeans faced the endless forests of this new world. Coyotes and black bears roam the woods, though, thankfully, the cougar has not been reintroduced.

Long-abandoned village sites are found throughout the pines, and cellar holes of homes that no longer ring with the laughter of children are the only remains of the vibrant human life which once called the Pine Barrens home. Women took care of their homes and toiled in gardens which have returned to forest. Sand roads are prolific, but many don’t go anywhere anymore. Their destinations are only clearings now. Once there were grist mills and lumber mills, furnaces, forges, and paper mills. Men worked in cedar mining, charcoal making, ship building, glass making, and other local industries that made the land throb with life. Today, there is silence.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sailing ships carried the products of the pines down rivers to the sea, and the industries that made those products stripped the land of its forests and drained its swamps. Yes, by today’s standards, the settlers exploited the land; they did so to feed their children, but they also loved that land and called it their own for generations.

There were poor people left out in the woods after the industries in which they worked had died. There were college-educated people who still chose to return to the land of their birth. There were sailors and sea-captains who farmed when they weren’t out sailing.

Even today, the residents of the Pine Barrens love their land with its solitude and peace. The land itself still produces. The cranberry and blueberry farmers are stewards of their realm and know how precious the water is to those who live in the area. Other area denizens may work outside the area but still return to the towns that nourished their ancestors.

Colorful people and wonderful stories yet thrive in this area which is so very different from the surrounding megalopolis. Historians and writers like Arthur Pierce, Henry Charlton Beck, John McPhee, and I spent many years collecting the stories of present and past that the essence of this special world might be preserved for the future. The dedication of my book was sincerely made to all those people of the pines who were truly the “heart of the pines.”

Once again, another writer has been seduced by the enticing pinelands. Karen Riley took pen to paper that she might ramble through that “heart” yet again with those who continue to love and labor in the pines in this twenty-first century. Their stories are fascinating, just as the stories told by those who came before them.

Many of those whom she interviewed are familiar to me. Others are not. Yet every story is special. Even though I no longer live in New Jersey, Ms. Riley took me back to a place and a people that I still love very much. Ms. Riley has found what I found before her: once you meet the people and walk the walk of the pines, you just get drawn in to a love of the place. The spirit envelops you, and you are home as you never expected to be.

So sit back and meet the people of the pines today, varied and interesting as they have always been, but be careful. You, too, may be hooked on pines.