Pine barren

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth --off lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact.

{sterile grounds = the sandy "pine barrens" between Albany and Schenectady were notorious for their lack of scenic beauty}

It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, through long cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever and anon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen sliding among broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there, rotting in the water.

But much of the land is ecologically exceptional, and remote: a contiguous 6,000 acres contains the largest unprotected pine barren forest in the United States.

However, even before anyone had paved a single pine barren in any part of the insect's range, the Karner blue was already a bug on the run.

Hurricane Floyd destroyed much of the Bahamas and caused some damage to the Pine Barren project (Beaver Street Fisheries), a 140,000 square foot lobster and fish processing plant and food service distribution center in Nassau.

AMERICAN FORESTS, in partnership with the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs from the Independent Order of Odd Fellows of New York, also is planting trees in a Global ReLeaf Forest at the Sunrise Fire pine barren restoration site on Long Island.

No doubt more than one wet-behind-the-ears pilot missed his target by a good country mile, and the small clearings grew into vast desolate stretches of Pine Barren sand.

The preserve is a 2,200-acre (890-ha) rare inland pine barren that provides refuge to the endangered Karner blue butterfly and is located in Albany, New York, the State capitol.