Pine Barrens

Sophie had lived in Philadelphia all her life.  The section of Philly she knows very well is Fern Rock.  She is very comfortable with public transportation, jay walking and walking with a purpose.  She stays aware of her surroundings, because when you live in a city, that is part of the deal.  Sophie can identify the difference between a car, a truck and a bus, just by sound.

She lives on a street consisting of row houses, and has shared a porch with a neighbor.  The stairs are shared with the neighbor on the other side.  This will keep your social skills sharp.  Not only is it an opportunity to get to know each other, it is also a social event.  Most spring and summer nights are spent, at least partially, on the porch.  Chatting with whoever passes and just hanging out is simply a part of life.  She knows pretty much all the people who live on her block.  She doesn’t like them all, but knows them by sight and will always say hello.

Twice a year, the block seems to have a clean up week.  These are weeks in spring and fall that are designated for sweeping.  Sophie has no idea where this came from, but it happens every year.  You will see one person after another come out with a broom to sweep up debris that is on the sidewalks and in the gutters.  Of course, she has always participated in this activity.  How could you not?  After all the sweeping is finished the sidewalks, steps and porch are hosed down with water.

Perhaps these clean up weeks coincide with when you bring your hose outside and when you put it away for the winter.  She has wondered about this and has settled on this as the reasoning behind “clean up week”.  Sophie has never seen a flyer reminding people to get this done, yet, somehow it happens.  She has to admit the street looks fresher after the chore is done.  

Because she is young, she generally cleans the properties on either side of her.  First because once you start a project like this, it takes on a life of its own.  There is sort of a Zen mindset that happens when you are sweeping and when you are using a hose. One neighbor is older and that just seems the right thing to do.  The other is a busy mother with a bunch of kids, again, that seems the right thing to do too.  Probably others on the block do the same.  Not sure if it is the Zen thing, or they are just being neighborly, because in short order, the job is complete.

Sophie gets along with her porch neighbor, and enjoys her kids.  They are always up to something.  As she sits reading on the porch, they forget she is even there and she hears all of the conversation between them.  She would be able to tell you who the natural leader is and who is sneaky.  It is fascinating to watch the group dynamics of four children as they go about their business of entertaining themselves.  She especially likes the arguments, and can always tell by the tone of voice who is getting ready for a fight.  This, of course, pulls the mother to the porch to referee the situation.  I don’t think her neighbor has any idea the entertainment value of her children.  They are close in age and all attend school, first, second, third and fourth grade.  They generally pair off by gender.  The boys and the girls, there are two of each.

Sophie works in center city and commutes on weekdays.  She takes the Reading railroad line to 12th and Market and walks to 17th Street.  Regardless of the weather and her outfit, the routine is the same.  She passes the same stores and knows when the sales will happen, as she sees the notices go up.The crush of people, especially downtown, is something that seems completely normal and she navigates the streets to and from the train effortlessly.  She is skilled at getting through a crowd of people, as most city dwellers are.  

The comfort level is probably due to knowing city life so well.  When she marries and her husband insists on living on a few acres of property, Sophie doesn’t think this will be a big deal.  To find such a location takes more time than she would have thought.  When you live near a city, finding acreage is a daunting task.  All the land near the city is much too expensive.  So they venture further and further out into Pennsylvania and into New Jersey.

It is an urban legend, or belief, that you will pay more for a home in PA, at least up front.  Where in Jersey you will pay less, but be taxed for years to come.  As the budget is tight, they opt for the second option.  When it is all said and done, they finally land in a town called Indian Mills, NJ.

Indian Mills is located at the northern end of the Pine Barrens State Forest.  It is most definitely rural.  There are working farms and most notably cranberry bogs and blueberry farms.  You are as likely to see a tractor on the road as a car, or truck.  The grocery stores and most retail stores are a few towns away.  There is a general store that has staples like milk and bread,and a bit of emergency things, but little else.  There is no public transportation.  There are no sidewalks or street lights.  The roads have no lines designating left and right.  Just a black top road.  Sophie loves the quaint feel of the place.

Sophie begins to unpack and settle into the three bedroom ranch home.  Her first nights there, she is too tired to notice very much.  Her husband leaves each day for work.  She will be working from home, as soon as she can find a cable company to get some internet.  She did not see that as being an issue.  Apparently, the cable companies are not all the way out into the rural areas, as she had assumed.

There is nothing but trees to look at from any window in the house.  They have an extensive lawn around the house, but after that are dense woods called the Pine Barrens.  There are a few other houses on her road.  She will walk to them and say hello someday soon.  She can see the street between the trees on the front lawn and occasionally sees people on horses ride by.  Not galloping, just riding by.  It is a strange sight for a city girl.  Horses on the street are something she has never seen before.  I mean she has seen horses, because in cities, they have carriages pulled by horses for tourists, but not just regular folks out for a ride.

Sophie and her husband are planning to put in a large garden.  Neither of them has any farming background, still they are hopeful they can grow some produce to eat next summer.  This item is on the “to do” list that is a mile long, and they have only been here a week.

The night sounds in the fall in Southern New Jersey are nothing like the sounds in a city.  No traffic sounds whatsoever.  These are sounds of critters that live in the woods.  Insects, frogs, small animals and such.  She has no idea which noises go with which group.  They are strange and a bit unsettling.  That combined with the darkest dark she has ever seen.  Cities have ambient light from street lamps, porch lights and store signs.  You never need a night light.  In the country, if you don’t have night lights, you are sure to bump into something in the dark.  She learns quickly that night lights and lamp timers are essential, to find your way around your home at night and to find your house when you come home late at night.  On the upside, when you sit out on the deck at night. you can see a million stars.

Unlike street sweeping, leaf collection is a larger, more arduous task.  She supposes it will get a Zen feeling at some point, but it is not now.  She has never seen so many leaves in one place.  And raking is a bit of a different motion than sweeping.  Plus, there are way more leaves than there ever was dirt on the city street.  She is creating huge piles on an old sheet, there will be around fifteen to twenty trips to the street with the sheet.   She will drag them to the street for the township to come by and vacuum up into a truck.  The vacuum is really a large hose, about twenty inches in diameter and has some kind of handle for the worker to control it’s direction.

The isolation is another drastic difference Sophie will need to navigate.  Not seeing another human being all day, for days on end, is something so foreign to her, it takes a few weeks until she realizes she is lonely for human contact.  This was never even a thought when they moved here.  Turns out when you are moving, you have so many other distractions and things to do, the complete change of environment doesn’t really get the attention that it actually needs.

Sophie and her husband will spend the next few weekends meeting their neighbors and exchanging contact information.  This will be both for social and practical reasons.  They may be needed to help a neighbor, or they may need some help themselves.  This is the culture of a rural community.  Neighbors helping neighbors.

While this happens in the city, it doesn’t have to be developed like it does in the country.  It is one of the byproducts of city living, and one you don’t realize you don’t have until you move to the rural areas.

Location does matter, and any place you choose will have advantages, as well as, disadvantages.  None of either will become evident until you move.  Seems like that should be part of the real estate information packet, when you are thinking of  changing location drastically.