Although I’ve lived in many places over the years, when I think of this elusive place known as “home,” my mind still turns to the pine barrens of South Jersey. Now, relocated to the Appalachians of West Virginia, I still turn to the horizon while driving, expecting sugar sand and tall pine stands, always, I think, just behind the next mountain bend. There it is, I suppose: once a Piney, always a Piney.
Yet, as I’ve commented before, there are strong parallels between the pine barren culture of New Jersey and rural Appalachian culture. It struck me first many years ago while watching the PBS documentary series “Country Boys,” which documents the life of two boys from Floyd County, Kentucky as they struggle with the dichotomy between the tradition of rural life and the call of urbanization, as well as the complexities of rural poverty. At the time, I’d never spent any time in Appalachia, yet their experiences harkened to my own growing up in New Jersey.
Again, as a student at Temple University, Dr. Audrey Horning was a guest lecturer for one of my classes. Her lecture on the work she conducted in Appalachia was formative in my mind for how I would approach work in the New Jersey pine barrens; struck again by the similarities, I saw a new paradigm for the connection of archaeological investigation and current cultural studies and folklore.
While in the process of researching an unrelated subject, I encountered the work of Dr. Mary T. Hufford, whose work specifically focuses on both Appalachia and the pine barrens of New Jersey. On the University of Pennsylvania website for the Center of Folklore and Ethnography, there are many of her articles available in PDF format. If you are interested in folklore and cultural history, they are certainly worth the time. And it seems that, like myself, she draws deep parallels between Appalachia and the New Jersey pine barrens.
Perhaps I am not so displaced after all; maybe we find the places, wherever we may be, that are home.
Give my love to New Jersey.
--Ariadne
Yet, as I’ve commented before, there are strong parallels between the pine barren culture of New Jersey and rural Appalachian culture. It struck me first many years ago while watching the PBS documentary series “Country Boys,” which documents the life of two boys from Floyd County, Kentucky as they struggle with the dichotomy between the tradition of rural life and the call of urbanization, as well as the complexities of rural poverty. At the time, I’d never spent any time in Appalachia, yet their experiences harkened to my own growing up in New Jersey.
Again, as a student at Temple University, Dr. Audrey Horning was a guest lecturer for one of my classes. Her lecture on the work she conducted in Appalachia was formative in my mind for how I would approach work in the New Jersey pine barrens; struck again by the similarities, I saw a new paradigm for the connection of archaeological investigation and current cultural studies and folklore.
While in the process of researching an unrelated subject, I encountered the work of Dr. Mary T. Hufford, whose work specifically focuses on both Appalachia and the pine barrens of New Jersey. On the University of Pennsylvania website for the Center of Folklore and Ethnography, there are many of her articles available in PDF format. If you are interested in folklore and cultural history, they are certainly worth the time. And it seems that, like myself, she draws deep parallels between Appalachia and the New Jersey pine barrens.
Perhaps I am not so displaced after all; maybe we find the places, wherever we may be, that are home.
Give my love to New Jersey.
--Ariadne
