Heart of the Pinelands

The New Jersey Pinelands skirt and go in and out of the fifty-something municipalities in which it resides, including the one in which I reside. The Pinelands National Reserve, as it is properly called, is a corrupted place. While it is a reserve, so much of it is not preserved in the state in which it is found by those who visit its wooded lands and the ghosts of smelting, forging, and logging villages that are now all but a memory or the set-aside corner of a state park.

So much of the Pinelands’ pine, oak, and cedar forests are no longer pristine. They instead have become what I call Suburban Woods, where the unnatural decay of suburban life conflicts with the natural decay and regeneration found in the woods that are asking to be left alone, if you don’t mind.

These woods are indeed a national treasure, as that is what the proprietors of this place call them. Yet, for too much of what lies within them, the forests and the streams that meander through them are not like the truly barren and remote areas of other states. Elsewhere—in the Adirondacks, for example—my son has learned to respect what was there before so many of us had shown up and disturbed the rest quietly enjoyed by tracts of land such as these. Here, my son is disturbed by what he sees on Pinelands trails near the neighborhood where he had done much of his growing up.

The suburban woods are not like unadulterated forests that my son has explored during summer camps, in another state, with chiefs and fellow campers. These local woods go down to the man-made lake and are subsumed by the waters imposed upon them. They have in them the evidence of kids getting away from their parents and getting away with drinking and making a mess. These woods are littered with the shotgun shells of hunters hunting and with the last of construction debris tucked away among the cedars, so that highway travelers are not affected by the eyesore (even though the hikers are).

These suburban woods have trails through them, but seldom far enough from nearby homes to not see those homes. These woods are in such close proximity to the highways that in them is heard the roar of tractor trailers and the loud humming of tires beneath the commuters eager to get back to their nests, some hour’s drive from the urban northland.

These woods are quite adulterated. They are full of the tracks of off-road bikes, ATVs, and SUVs, which may explain the lack of any other kind of tracks, save for the dogs that walk through the woods with their owners. They have in them the remains of the work of developers who have opened up a swath of land for a new street and new homes, only to abandon the project once they had gone bankrupt, without the funds to give the land back to the earth, if that were possible.

These are the woods that ask for some sort of recompense, but do not demand it from passersby or from those who have not maintained a demarcation between their own world and that of the oxymoronically named Pine Barrens where I live and where I tread. They do not demand, for their credo is one of Live and let live, in response to those who soil their soil with the stains of another world.

These tracts of sugar sand and moss, pygmy pines and pitcher plant, red fox and red-tailed hawk intrigue but a few who would take them for what they are. For those who have heard the wild calling them, these patches of land have become an irritant to their souls, rather than a retreat for the soul disquieted. What might have been a peaceful sanctuary has instead become a place where the teen party-ground sits as undisturbed as the pitch pines that shade the abandoned beer bottles and spent campfires. Yet the pines are disturbed, nonetheless, for I have seen the indigenous pines, cedar, and sassafras struggle to compete for sunshine with the many introduced bits of discarded civilization that have invaded the territory of the natural.

Further in, though, beyond the suburban woods is a deeper, cleaner place. Here, in The Deep, one comprehends what is not known in that earlier space where the wild is comingled with the tame. Here, one discovers that the suburban woods, as contaminated as they are, offer a layer of wooded insulation between suburban life and this new place, further in—where sanctuary is findable, reachable, and habitable.

The sanctuary gives the soul a momentary and needful respite, a chance to leave some things behind, or else bring them here to leave them here, in a peaceful place where they can, of themselves, slough off naturally. There, in the every-day physical world that you have left in the care of others is the rat-race, the world of schedules and deadlines, commitments and follow-through, and conflicts outnumbering resolutions.

Yet, here, where the soul can quiet itself, is a refuge where wooded peace supplants the anxieties that permeate the left-behind world, and one learns that the journey to this safe harbor is worth the trip, even if the trip must be undertaken through the zone where the natural and the unnatural cohabitate.  Here is where one can be fully immersed and fully wild, as wild as the barrens themselves.

In this deep, you know how to return to the world that you typically inhabit. You know this because the world you left is right over that hill over there, or just through that path over there—the path or hill that brought you to your wooded refuge, after crossing through the intermingled region that had earlier disturbed you.

You know how to return and you know that, in your private sanctuary (or, so you think it’s private), you have the choice to go back to that civilized place—for you can clearly see the way back, though it clearly feels better here, in the deep. Or, at least this has been my experience in these Pineland woods, where life is refreshing and tolerable.

What is not refreshing, and frankly unnerving, is what lies even further in, beyond the safe zone, where landmarks no longer show the way out. Here, in the place that is Too Deep, once you have lost sight of the way out, your choices are limited, because, for all you know, you may be here for days in this place of inner darkness, where you are doubly insulated from where you had been.

Once you lose your way back home, you can no longer just exercise your choice to return home. You are now unmoored, without an anchor, and set adrift in the sea of your own forgetfulness, no longer sure of where you have been or where you are going, because suddenly everything is alternately familiar and unfamiliar.

Between you and home is the place where you had enjoyed solace and peace, away from the stressors of everyday life. There is also that place, passed through on the way in, which had marked the edge of surburbia, where you had first entered in and noticed that your world had intruded upon this world that you had hoped would be left alone—as you now are: alone. You are disoriented and suddenly no longer tied to civilized life. The peace you had known, just a short while earlier, has been robbed from you; you are no longer at peace, but are frightened for your life.

Beyond the area of safety, the anxiety that you had thought you left behind, in the restful place you had left behind, returns. It returns with a vengeance.

You find that what was once a wanted and even needful place of rest has instead become a place of terror, where the horror of the situation must be pushed aside long enough for you to attempt to once again find your bearings, if at all possible, so you can get yourself out. And you hope and pray that it is possible, because you quickly realize that the Pinelands are a nice place to visit, but you’d really rather not spend the night, if you could help it.

When you go too deep, you find that the Pinelands are like any other wooded area. You see that this place is polluted at the edges, and inviting further in, but still further in is the place where, if one isn’t prepared, one’s life may be on the line.

This is what my step-son learned, not long ago, when venturing off of the main path and then the secondary path, to find that there was no third-tier path he could follow, to find his way back to his bicycle. What he (and his mother and I) had thought would be for him just a bike ride to the state park aptly named Double Trouble turned out to be a seven-hour adventure.

This was a time that was supposed to have been spent by him reading a book in a park and returning home; instead, it was an afternoon of police in their SUVs blasting their sirens until he could follow the sound back toward the main path and out of the thicket, beyond the stream that he had fallen into. We later learned that, after losing his orientation entirely, he passed the same tree stands over and over, as everything began to look, as he said, familiar, but not familiar enough to lead him to the way he came in.

This is also what had happened to me, also not long ago, when my son had said he was in some nearby woods, and I found his bike as evidence of that intention, but couldn’t find my son. He knows what he’s doing in the woods, Pinelands or not, but he wasn’t where I had thought I might find him. I followed a path, along where he might have been, and found some high ground to yell for him. And yell I did, yet with no answer; the woods were silent.

Then, I noticed that the sun was creating longer shadows and daylight was getting scarce. The woods were no longer quiet. Or so I thought. What sounded like a growl was possibly getting closer yet not visible enough to identify itself, nor did I want to see whatever it was. I was now no longer concerned just for my son’s safety, but also for my own, quickly remembering how I got to that point in the woods and glad that I knew the way out.

My son was later found and returned home safely, like his step-brother before him. As it turned out, my son was in another part of the woods, and returned comfortable, calm, and cool. But I had another experience. By proxy, I had felt that possibly my son, as experienced as he was, had met his match. I had also thought that I was on the edge of that same experience, myself.

The situation reminded me of a classmate who had drowned in the ocean after her daughter had gone out too far beyond the breakers. I had wondered, perhaps unjustifiably, if this circumstance would have become like hers—if my son or I had proceeded further in, beyond the point of no return and into the heart of the darkness before me.

In the heart of the Pine Barrens, as with any other densely forested area, I know that beyond the place where the soul is comforted lies a place that can rock the spirit of the man who enters therein. As I was in the woods I am also with myself. I battle the inner darkness within me that lies beneath my inner comfort zone. I wonder about that place, thinking there is a Kurtz in there, waiting for me, beckoning me to submit to him.