Returning to the pines
The alarm goes off at 3 AM. I toss my camera bag into the trunk and start the drive. Nearly two hours on empty roads, where coffee feels like a small salvation. Then I leave the car behind and step into the dark woods.
The light is still blue, the mist sitting low between the trees. It is quiet in a way that is hard to find anywhere else. Some mornings I just stand there for a while, not quite ready to lift the camera.
The light is still blue, the mist sitting low between the trees. It is quiet in a way that is hard to find anywhere else. Some mornings I just stand there for a while, not quite ready to lift the camera.
That alone is enough to come back. Not chasing something new, just something slightly different each time.
It still surprises me that a place like this exists in my home state of New Jersey. The Pine Barrens stretch for miles, wide and unbroken, completely at odds with everything around it. I am not the first to feel that way. John McPhee wrote about it with the same sense of disbelief:
"I found it hard to believe that so much unbroken forest could still exist so near the big Eastern cities, and I wanted to see it while it was still there." — John McPhee, The Pine Barrens
That was in 1968. The forest is still here. And so I keep returning.