I had grown up hearing stories about the New Jersey Pine Barrens; a dark forest, seemingly out of time, home to “Pineys” and the infamous Jersey Devil. Towards the end of 2011, I decided to explore it for myself. What followed was an attempt to understand it from multiple perspectives, going progressively deeper, over many years. My aim was to depict a sense of place, one that existed in people’s minds as a realm that straddles reality and imagination. What I found was a source of pride and character, a landscape that defies all expectations, and a struggle to hold onto identity, culture, and the natural world in the face of greed and corruption.

An Island of Wilderness in a Sea of Industry and Civilization

This strange and often otherworldly place is made even more uncanny by the fact that it is nestled within the most densely populated state in the nation, and home to hundreds of thousands of people. To these people, daily life and cultural identity are inextricably linked to this particular land.

The New Jersey Pinelands is the nation’s first national reserve, a UNESCO world heritage site, and the largest area of undeveloped land between Maine and Florida. They can be seen at night from space as a dark hole in a bed of lights. They are home to many rare and endangered plants and animals. Fire rejuvenates them and nourishes their sandy soil. Below them, a sensitive aquifer provides drinking water to thousands of people.

I found a knowledgeable guide in illustrator Allen Crawford, an explorer of senses, and followed him through pygmy pines and marshland. We drifted down tea-colored cedar water streams, drove miles on sugar sand roads, found rare orchids and ferns, tree frogs, and endangered snakes. We hiked in snowstorms over blowdowns in the Great Swamp and waded through centuries old sphagnum moss. We let the mist and moonlight guide us over cold, black water.

I followed several other characters too: a basket weaver, a decoy carver, a country singer, a cranberry farmer, and I reveled in the art of hopping between eras, between tradition and the mundanity of modern life. Through moments of laughter, whispered stories over flickering light, vignettes of stark contradiction, and quiet contemplation among wild things, I saw a yearning for a connection to the natural world and a struggle to understand our current relationship to it.

An Uncertain Future

The time I captured will also be a document of an important moment for the Pine Barrens that questions the future of the land and the identity of the people connected to it. Much like when John McPhee wrote his book in 1968, the continued survival of the Pine Barrens is uncertain. Just this year, a natural gas pipeline was approved by the commission whose job it is to stop precisely this type of building in the Pinelands, potentially opening up a Pandora’s Box for destructive development and calling into question the prolonged ecological balance.

What began as an exploration of wonder and the mystery in the natural world became a need to tell a story of what we could ultimately lose, including whom we claim to be.

The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra

From those very first days, before I quite knew where this was headed, I partnered with a band of musicians who took up the moniker, The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra. Their music is a sparse mixture of traditional instrumentation and synthesized soundscapes. Together, we aimed to present this exploration and interpretation of The Pine Barrens as it happened and invite people along for the journey. We began to mount screenings with live scores and narration. These would take place in theaters, museums, galleries, and at times, the forest and farms to audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with the land. The film and the music evolved together through these performances, each musician spending time in the Pinelands and finding their personal inspiration, all culminating in the feature-length version of the project that we are on the precipice of completing.

Join Us in the Last Leg of Our Journey

With principle photography and editing already resolved, we are looking to complete a theatrical version of the film for festivals and distribution and we need your help to do that.

We are seeking completion funds to cover the remaining filming and post-production, such as color correction, sound mixing, and professionally engineering the score. The funds will also allow us to bring the live performance edition of The Pine Barrens to more places around the globe.

We wanted to be able to come to you only when we could show you the scope and quality of what we were accomplishing. Hundreds of our supporters have already been able to see the editions of the project screened with the live score and the reviews have been extremely positive. In November, news of project made the front cover of the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

WHYY’s Friday Arts - A nine-minute segment produced by Michael O'Reilly.

Hyperallergic - New Jersey’s One Million Acres of Undeveloped, Otherworldly Land by Meredith Seller

Newsworks.org by Ilene Dube

Philly.com and Philadelphia Inquirer Front page article and interactive story.

South Jersey Magazine: David Scott Kessler, Person To Watch

Route 40 A Pine Barrens Documentary Nears the Finish Line by Bill Sprouse

For Your Generosity

Since this has been an evolving project and a collaboration, so much more has been produced under the umbrella of The Pine Barrens than the film. For the first time, as perks for your generosity, we are offering a full-length album and videos of The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra, original artwork, and in keeping with our creative mission to share The Pine Barrens experience, we are even offering opportunities for a private campsite performance screening with some friends and a guided kayak tour with the film’s guide, Allen Crawford.

Other Ways You Can Help

Even if you can’t donate right now, we would love your help in spreading the word about our project. Please share this page by using Indiegogo’s share tools. If you know people whose lives are connected to the Pine Barrens or the natural world, or they just love interesting evocative documentary, they are going to want to see this.

You can also support your national and state parks or volunteer with the organizations who step in and do the work that the government cannot, or will not do. They are the reason why we still have places like the Pine Barrens today.