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If you’ve never read a book or article by John McPhee, then you are missing
a quiet pleasure. He writes nonfiction about a variety of people and places in a
thorough and careful manner, yet with humor and insight too.
In The
Pine Barrens, which he wrote back in 1967, he describes a huge tract of land in New
Jersey that was populated by few people yet served as the acquifer for New York City. At
least it did at the time. I often wonder now, so many years later, if development has
changed the place and the people living there.
It is a lovely book. How
wonderful to read about a community so physicaly close at hand and yet so culturally
distant from common experience. He examines the land, of course, gives some idea of the
importance of the place as a water source. But he’s also looking at the people living
there. The “pineys” — who would object if outsiders called them that — lived in
conditions the rest of us would consider to be great deprivation. Yet they didn’t feel
deprived, and he explains quite effectively how this could be.
“Pineys
are much more imaginative than non-pineys with the common names of plants and flowers.
There is a plant in the Pine Barrens that has velvety, magical leaves to which water
absolutely will not adhere. Its common name is golden club. The pineys call it
neverwet.”
Some say his writing is an acquired taste, because the breadth
of his information can be daunting. His research is meticulous, and sometimes it takes
sheer force of will to get through some of his longer books. To me, he chooses topics the
way some choose a house; he’s not only looking for a comfortable building, but also for
the neighbors and the community and the surrounding natural environment that will
together comprise his new home. He looks around him, researches the history or geology of
a place, reads up on the native plants, and interviews the neighbors as if he’s looking
for long-term alliances. In the process, he demonstrates the value of exploring the life
that’s right here in front of us, if we would only pay such attention.
