The Quarry in the Pines

It was my best friend's birthday, and all she wanted was to float in its dead water and look up at the stars.

Last night, we went down to the quarry. It was my best friend Kelly’s birthday, and all she wanted was to float in its dead water and look up at the stars; we’d done the same thing last year, when she turned 30, and have been there plenty of other times besides. It’s a risky pursuit, but that’s part of what makes it so much fun. We’ve been best friends since we were teenagers, and getting into trouble together has been one of our favorite pastimes. Trespassing in an active sand quarry at the dead of night in the middle of the Pine Barrens feels pretty tame by now, at least to a couple of forest creatures. I love Kelly more than I love anything, and if that is what she wanted to do for her birthday, then by god, that’s what we were going to do.

There’s a reason sand pits like this are called “blue holes”—during the day, the water is tinted an unnatural Caribbean blue due to the silica in the sand, and local lore dictates that the Jersey Devil likes to swim in them. They’re scattered throughout the Pine Barrens, and host hidden dangers like steep drop-offs, surprise currents, cold spots, and god knows what kind of rusting machinery is lurking below. People die in them sometimes. But others keep swimming in them, because the water is warm and the sugar sand “beaches” are inviting and there is not much else to do out there, during the summer or otherwise. As long as you stay close to shore, approach the endeavor with some caution, and always go with friends, it’s a risk that can feel worth taking. I tell myself that we are smart about it, at least; we’d be sad to give it up, even as just an occasional adventure.

To get to our spot, you’ve got to know the area pretty well. It’s off Rt. 70, like most things are in that part of South Jersey, and you’ll pass by a few local landmarks. There’s Leisuretowne, the retirement community where everyone’s grandparents want to end up.. There’s Hampton Lakes, a community of trailers and small houses which at some point acquired the nickname Compton Lakes because most people there are poor and a lot of people in the broader area are racist. I spent a lot of time there in high school because my friend Justin lived there with his mom. He introduced me to Megadeth, weed, and Insane Clown Posse (though only one out of the three really stuck). 

He used a wheelchair and sometimes crutches, and went by Wheels; for a long time, he was my only friend who was also disabled, and he helped make me feel okay about my own disability. We called ourselves Sugar and Spice. We went to junior prom together, and then he ended up dating my friend Ashley when we were around 16; I was secretly so jealous, even though I was already dating some other guy by then. (Come to think of it, Ashley dated another one of my exes, too, Jason with the blue hair and the lisp. What the fuck, Ashley.) Justin and I still talk on Facebook sometimes. He’s still handsome, and he still calls me Sugar.

Keep driving, and you’ll pass a road on the left that leads to my friend Ryan’s house. He was the loudest, weirdest, cleverest, prettiest punk dude Seneca High School had ever seen, and spent most of high school dating my intimidating friend Felicia. We had history and poli sci together, and he and I had a great time needling our more conservative classmates during the Iraq War era. There weren’t a lot of “political” kids in our school, so we stood out (his long hair and safety pins and my Morbid Angel T-shirts and black lipstick helped, too). We hooked up once, in that teenage definition of deep kisses and fumbling hands, before his mom and brothers got home. Kelly ended up dating his brother for a bit during college. It was a small world. 

Ryan died a few years back from a heroin overdose. There was a local legend that he’d gotten blitzed and walked into traffic outside his house with a PBR can in hand, but we recently heard the truth, that they had found his body somewhere in West Philly. He was 23. His best friend, Scotty, died the same way, about a year later; by then, he had been living in a Philly park for some time, and lost some of his fingers in an accident, so we liked to joke that we matched. He was a rare bird. I miss them.

A little ways up on the right, there’s the road that leads to Chatsworth, where I grew up. My parents are still there, in the little rancher house; you can’t see much from the road except trees, but if you squint, you might make out my dad’s truck and the sheds where he keeps his butcher shop and chickens and hunting gear. Back on the highway, you’ll pass the road that leads down to where my grandma lives in Vincentown, in the house my grandfather built. He died in March, so now she lives alone; my uncle and his wife check on her every day, but she really wants to move to Leisuretowne. She turned 83 on Saturday. 

A mile or so after, there’s another road that quickly turns to dirt, and if you drive down far enough, it’ll eventually take you to the part of the woods where my other grandma and my aunts and uncle and cousins and their new babies live. That side of the family is knit very closely together, and their houses are all within spitting distance of one another. My newest nephew’s name is Ford. His dad, my cousin Jimmy, is an auto mechanic. Redneck poetry. 

By now, after you’ve visited all the old friends and ghosts and relations, you’re getting close to the quarry. You have to drive down a different dirt road for a few miles (I won’t tell you which one), park by the roadside memorial, and then duck under the gate blocking the road. After that, you’ll have to walk about a mile through the woods on a white sand path to get down to the quarry itself, which will suddenly rise like a medieval fortress once you turn the last corner. It’s undoubtedly safer to go during the daytime, but sometimes things just don’t turn out like that. We discovered recently that they’ve added some new floodlights by the mining office, so now there’s a little more visibility than usual, but you should probably bring a flashlight when you’re picking your way through the sand and stones and weeds to get down to the water. There will be Fowler’s toads everywhere; don’t step on any.

The quarry itself is a strange and magical place after the sun goes down, which is when we usually end up there. Its sand hills look like an alien landscape under the soft purple glow of twilight, with the stars shining hard and sky tinged pink from Philadelphia’s light pollution. Down by the water, the air is filled with gnats (which is less than ideal), and with the calls of toads, who hop out of the glare of our phone flashlights and sing to us as we float. This time, we only stayed for a half hour or so; the new lights sketched us out, and the gnats were out in full force, and the danger of what we were doing stuck out a little more this time. 

Maybe that’s the difference between your twenties and your thirties. When you’re younger, you do all kinds of dumb shit without a second thought. Once you’ve grown up a little, you’re still down to do the same dumb shit, but you take some extra time to think about it, and abort the mission once things get too dicey.

That’s what we ended up doing. It was still a good adventure, and a good birthday. We stopped at a Wegman’s on the way home, the one we used to go to all the time in high school. After filling up at the hot food bar (which we somehow never paid for), we would go in on their mini chocolate cake (they have the best chocolate cake) and sit in the parking lot, laughing and eating it with our hands. We were a beautiful mess, and still are in a lot of ways, even though we didn’t get the cake. She’s vegan and doesn’t eat gluten anymore, and I was mostly focused on buying veggies and a specific marinade for the next night’s dinner, so we grabbed some vegan, gluten-free Oreo knock-offs and headed back to Philly.

I got home around midnight and was throwing together a late dinner when the phone rang. It was Kelly, sounding strange. She’s just found out that one of her ex-boyfriends, a guy she’d worked alongside at a coffee shop in Portland years ago, had just died from the coronavirus. He was 30 and otherwise healthy, and was living in Arizona. His girlfriend is pregnant with their first child. It’s all just too fucking sad.

And I suppose things like that are why we love that quarry so much. The moment you leave its clandestine embrace, the real world comes rushing back in with all of its pain and fear and trauma. But down at the quarry, floating in that unearthly blue water, you can momentarily escape the gutter that humanity has created for itself, and look straight up at the stars.