Feedback has been good. I certainly learned a lot of new material! The symposium was a delicate balance between the cultural and environmental elements of McPhee’s work. Five of six presenters were from South Jersey, and four of those Pinelands residents. Stockton's renewed interest in things Pinelands is a good thing. Their new Hammonton cultural center should help to continue this course.
I was happy to have all that room to dance around between two giant screens. My talk provided a glossary to the book’s copious geographic references. For example, there was a spirited debate during the ‘60s as to the Pinelands Ice Age heritage; a polar desert or cool moist forest? McPhee took the less popular stand by stating, “The Pine Barrens were then a cold desert of permafrost and tundra” (p. 121). He was also right when he stated, “Technically, the Pine Barrens were much larger than the thousand or so square miles of them that remain wild” (P. 5).
When he wrote, “There are streams of water under this earth that run all the time” (p. 18), I showed geophysical evidence of dune-covered streams. Also, “The vulnerability of the Pine Barrens aquifer is disturbing to contemplate” (p. 17) was exemplified by spungs drying up. And, he explained Pineys “know that their environment is unusual and they know why they value it (p. 56) could be explained by “geodiversity,” that is valuing and conserving abiotic nature.
The author also talked about the pre Ice Age proto-Hudson River, the Laurentide Ice Sheet, hardpan (fragipan), spongs (spungs), cripples, Indians, runaway Negroes, ancient trails, bog iron, the Jersey Devil, sugar sand (wind-frosted), and more. I hadn’t realized how much sense of place McPhee really had, even if he missed the southern half. As DeVito pointed out, let’s hope the younger generation gets it too.
S-M
