The Pipe
A Pinelands Tale
By Paul E. Pedersan, Jr
In and around the Pine Barrens, there are many, many nature areas, nature preserves, and wildlife management areas for folks to take short hikes along their trails, and enjoy picnicking, fishing, bird and animal watching, and just being “out in the woods” for a few hours, without roaming or possibly getting lost somewhere in the entire 1.1 million acres that makes up South Jersey’s Pinelands. These areas are like more tame, “gated” communities within the Pine Barrens.
One such area is Haddonfield’s Crows Woods Nature Preserve in the south end of Haddonfield. I was. reminded of Crow’s Woods, and the hundreds of hours I spent there as a kid, by a Facebook post from a life-long friend, Debbie Morrison of Collingswood. She’s recently discovered the many joys of Crows Woods, and her post brought back a herd of fond memories that include the legendary South Jersey witch, Peggy Clevenger, an old pipe we used to dare each other to cross, and how trees in the Pine Barrens get their growth rings.
Back in the mid-sixties, as they were building the Patco Speed Line that runs on the western side of Crow’s Woods, there was barely a week that went by that me and several of my friends weren’t exploring Crow’s Woods, and the woods around Evans Pond, close by. The head waters of Cooper River run through both areas, and we spent many hours roaming the woods, looking for frogs, snakes, and salamanders to capture and sell to Evans Pet Shop on Tanner St. in Haddonfield.
One day, way back in Crow’s Woods, we discovered a pipe that was about eighteen inches in diameter and twenty-five yards long. It traversed a ravine that the ‘crick’ ran through. It was about a thirty-foot drop from the middle of the pipe into the shallow ‘crick’ below, we saw. The rest of the ground in the ravine was thick, mucky swamp, complete with skunk cabbages and Jack-In-The-Pulpits. Me and my friends all looked at each other, silently asking “Who’s going first?”
As it turned out, I was elected to take the first walk across the pipe. There were five joining collars that were a couple inches high, at five-yard intervals along the pipe that I’d have to carefully step over on my way across. As I sized things up, I found myself getting a little nervous, and my four friends started sensing it.
“You know, once you get out there, you won’t be able to turn around”, said Bobby. He had a wry twinkle in his eyes as he continued to warn me, adding, “and you won’t be able to sit and shimmy across because of those collars, either”.
It was indeed going to be a daunting task, my hands getting moist as I contemplated the possibilities.
“Dougie Clevenger crossed this pipe once, Debbie said”, said Donny, my best friend. The Clevengers lived on our street. Doug was away at Annapolis, many years older than us, but Debbie, his sister, was our age.
“How do you know?”, I asked Donny.
“Debbie told me a long time ago. She said Dougie was out here looking for a tree that their great, great grandmother supposedly put a spell on because she was a witch or something. The spell is carved into the bark”, he said.
“What spell?”, I demanded, with Mark and Freddie demanding to know, as well.
“The story goes”, Donny continued, “that Peggy Clevenger, the witch of the Pine Barrens, put a curse on all the trees around here one mischief night so nobody would forget her. Every mischief night, a black fog covers all the woods for one minute before midnight and stains the bark. That’s how mischief night got its name. As the tree grows and covers itself with new bark, the stain stays there. That’s how you can tell by the rings how old a tree is”.
I stood there and thought about things for a moment.
“You know what?”, I said. My friends all said in unison, “What?”
“I really wanna find that tree and take a piece of it back with us. It has to be magic!”
Stretching each of my arms straight out to my sides for balance, I started across the pipe. The further I walked, the higher I was off the ground. As I got out to the middle, with the crick running below me, I smiled and shouted, “Yo! Guys! It ain’t so bad! C’mon across!”
My pace quickened as I passed the point of no return, the middle, and got closer to the other side. Finally, I reached terra-firma, shot my arms up in victory, and jumped onto the ground, hearing sticks and twigs snapping and echoing in the woods. I’d made it across first. A true leader and pioneer of Crow’s Woods.
Spinning around to guide and encourage the next one of my friends across, I realized, instantly, that I was alone. They were nowhere to be seen. But several yards from where I stood, I saw a giant old Beech tree. I walked up to it, and though the years made it hard to read, I saw the following etched into the bark:
“Black be the sky, Black be the night, Black be the air, As black as the night, From now to forever, My blackness you’ll see, From the skin to the heart, Of every tree.”
I’m sure no one has ever crossed that pipe faster than I did on my way out of Crow’s Woods that day.
Paul Evans Pedersen, Jr. is a author, singer-songwriter, journalist, storyteller, and jewelry maker born and raised in South Jersey. He has appeared on numerous TV shows including “Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown” on CNN. His jewelry, “Pine Barrens Diamonds”, is made from old glass he digs in the Pine Barrens, and is available in shops and boutiques throughout the region.
