THE WOODCUTTER lives alone in the land of legends, in the Jersey pines, where moonshiners and pirates once hid among the ghosts and ghouls, where ruddy creeks and empty roads still twist on for miles.
On this September morning, lizards skitter over the sweet-smelling pine logs that Bill Wasiowich split and stacked on the lot where he lives. It's down a narrow, dirt driveway, just before a bend in the road, in Woodland Township, Burlington County.
Tools are scattered about the moss-covered workbench where he prunes his pickings from the forest. On the front porch of the Crooked Barrel Gun Club, where Wasiowich lives rent-free, hummingbirds and bees hover above jars of sugar water he hung.Bill Wasiowich sits on the steps of his porch at the Burlington County gun club where he lives and works, in the New Jersey Pinelands. He's the last surviving "Piney" profiled in John McPhee's famous 1967 book, The Pine Barrens.
In his "sixty-something" years, the Trenton native has been an orphan, a high-school dropout, a wanderer, a shrimper, a worker waist-deep in a sea of bobbing cranberries, and mostly a loner who's earned his keep deep into New Jersey's rare, untouched places.
Today, he's the last true "Piney" of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a piece of folklore in the flesh with bushy eyebrows and sap-covered pants.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20120921_PINE_AND_DANDY.html
On this September morning, lizards skitter over the sweet-smelling pine logs that Bill Wasiowich split and stacked on the lot where he lives. It's down a narrow, dirt driveway, just before a bend in the road, in Woodland Township, Burlington County.
Tools are scattered about the moss-covered workbench where he prunes his pickings from the forest. On the front porch of the Crooked Barrel Gun Club, where Wasiowich lives rent-free, hummingbirds and bees hover above jars of sugar water he hung.Bill Wasiowich sits on the steps of his porch at the Burlington County gun club where he lives and works, in the New Jersey Pinelands. He's the last surviving "Piney" profiled in John McPhee's famous 1967 book, The Pine Barrens.
In his "sixty-something" years, the Trenton native has been an orphan, a high-school dropout, a wanderer, a shrimper, a worker waist-deep in a sea of bobbing cranberries, and mostly a loner who's earned his keep deep into New Jersey's rare, untouched places.
Today, he's the last true "Piney" of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a piece of folklore in the flesh with bushy eyebrows and sap-covered pants.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20120921_PINE_AND_DANDY.html