Home.

The very first summer that I worked as a counselor at my deeply beloved YMCA camp in NJ, the then CEO gave a welcome speech to the entire staff during our staff training week.  Situated on nearly 800 gorgeous undeveloped acres in the Pine Barrens, this camp is magical, mysterious, and a place truly unlike any other.  Gary, the CEO, was talking to us all about the power of camp and he said something I’ve never forgotten.  When you turn off of Stokes Road, he explained, and round the first bend on our dirt road that takes you back to camp, something magical happens.  The rest of the world just falls away.

Lately though, I’ve been thinking that when I go home, the rest of the world falls away even before I turn on to that old camp road.  Instead, I think it happens the minute I finally exit off of the turnpike - all the way down to exit #7 - and merge my way onto a little two lane highway, Route 206.  This road is my straight shot to farmland, to pine trees, to so many other roads I know and love like the back of my hand.  It is the country road that takes me home. 

As a kid and horse back rider, I was actively involved in 4-H growing up.  Once a year, the county would sponsor Farm Fair, a week we looked forward to like no other.  We brought our horses for a 5 day stay in make shift stalls, riding and exhibiting them for all who came.  It was always hot, exhausting, and probably a little bit insane, but remains one of my favorite childhood memories, no question.

This year, for the first time in probably 12 years, I made it back.

 

 

Farm Fair is as country fair as it can possibly come.  From pig races to quilting and canning blue ribbon awards to skillet tosses and genuine tractor pulls, this fair leaves no farming 'event' ignored.  I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to wander the fair grounds with my Dad; to laugh, to reminiscence, to soak up every bit of this farmland culture I know and cherish.  I doubt it will come as a shock if I tell you that over the course of the day I found myself near joyful tears on multiple occasions.     

 

When I first moved to the city for college, I remember meeting some boy at a party.  When he asked where I was from, he replied completely straight-faced: "But you don't act like you're from New Jersey.  It seems more like you're from Vermont or something."  

Thus began my mission and crusade, working to educate people that there is more to New Jersey than The Sopranos or the Snooki land of The Jersey Shore. 

Although, the older I get, the less I correct people when they state their (often clearly misguided) opinions on New Jersey.  Let them think it's some place they'd never want to be.  It'll leave more room for all the rest of us.

 

There is a sound unlike any other when you live in the Pine Barrens, a sound I don't even think I actually noticed until I moved away so many years ago.  It’s like an indescribable whisper, a quiet secret that drifts ever so gently among the pines.  Whenever I get home these days I try my very best to listen as long and as hard as I can, for it's a sound I've never heard anywhere else, one I don't think you could duplicate if you tried.  It is a sound that soothes and calms my soul, one I carry with me in my heart, when I'm away from these woods I have come to love and appreciate more than I ever imagined I would .

 

You would know it if you heard it.  You would come to love it.