The Pine Barrens

"He don't know the woods. He don't know nothing. He can't even fry a hamburger."

-- A Piney old-timer, dismissing a government outsider, as quoted in The Pine Barrens, by McPhee.

There remain surprises in this world we think we know so well: the ancient, fecund marshlands at the bottom of sun-scorched Iraq; the almost subtropical warmth at England's southern tip; and in every nation, hardy, sometimes mysterious peoples living disconnected from the rest of society.

Such is the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and such are its people. The great cities of Eastern America -- New York City, Philadelphia, Trenton -- surround this place on three sides; the Atlantic Ocean borders it on the east. Its sandy infertility earned it the scorn and disinterest of early settlers and it was mostly left alone whilst a nation grew up around it. Its wilderness still spanned a thousand square miles in 1967. That was when John McPhee wrote his classic, "The Pine Barrens," which I had the pleasure of acquiring this week.

I've never been there, although I did spend some time long ago on former Pine Barren land, in what is now Cape May, N.J.

It is inevitable that some of it would be lost but I hope that we have sense enough today not to destroy what is left of it. It seems to be a special place, a unique place.