Massachusetts: Season's End

After the fiery heights of peak autumn, the season is fading away gradually here in Boston, with a long tail of misty mornings, bronzed and barren treetops, and winnowing light from late sunrises. Along my various rambles, I watch as the city settles into a mood that feels strangely familiar, evoking, as it does, long-past memories from many Novembers ago. I’m trying to bring those memories forward, to merge them with the present, to feel grounded and safe, to say, “This is where I am. I know this place.” “This is where Jane and I did so-and-so on such-and-such day.” “This is where I felt such-and-such and learned this-and-that".” But, try as I might, those memories and feelings barely have a chance to surface before I turn my head - and they’re lost again.

It happens often now. Truth be told, I’m not just turning here and there - I’m spinning. The pandemic is still raging. I’ve got my head down in a spiritual sense, pouring myself into my work and my immediate surroundings and not much else (thank goodness I find my work meaningful and fruitful and fulfilling). So much has changed, is changing, that I find myself struggling to recall the boy that made semiannual trips to Boston over a decade ago, or to tell people where exactly I’m from, or where precisely I’m going. Moments of genuine connection are rare and always precious; they make me silent and grateful. I can tell that Jane is a bit perplexed by all this, concerned when I ask her to leave me alone for a night (at the opposite end of our little one-bedroom apartment), or to let me wander into the city on my own. It occurs to me that I’m searching for something that no one else can provide for me, or find or craft or discover in my stead. A sense of belonging. A still frame, with my heart at its center. A place or a thing or a feeling to call home.

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Mild weather has given us the opportunity to explore or re-visit a variety of locations throughout the state as the season draws to a close. In order, the photographs here are from:

November 8, 2020: A morning ramble around the dike and marshlands at the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge section in Concord. I nearly leave my tripod behind, in a muddy bank along the Concord River. We stroll through the local woods and visit the graves of Thoreau and Emerson, catching the last of fall’s vibrant colors.

November 21, 2020: A brief stroll around the Harold B. Clark Town Forest - a small pondside woodland near Foxborough. Afterward we make some purchases and returns at the nearby Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. Our foldeable canoe has arrived in the mail - too late to be comfortably used this season.

November 28, 2020: A few shots taken just a block away from our apartment building, in a marvelous grove of beech trees which has fast become my favorite spot in the city. The majestic, curving trunks and leaf-laden boughs create a lovely space to get lost in during the warmer months, and even now, they retain the aura of a special place.

November 29, 2020: A sunset walk at the Cutler Park Reservation in Needham. A popular place for a post-Thanksgiving Sunday outing, as evidenced by the crowded parking lot. We amble through marshes and pine groves along the middle reaches of the Charles River, and watch the swans float placidly on Kendrick Pond.

December 13, 2020: An attempted golden-hour visit to the Great Marsh in Essex and re-visit to Beverly’s West Beach. High tide and sunrise only coincide here once or twice a month, and unfortunately we’re greeted this morning by fog and rain. I try to make lemonade with some abstract long exposures of the ruined jetty in the mist.

Hampshire: A Reunion

Mid-October has come and gone in a flash. In the city, it looks something like a drizzly weekend, spent mostly indoors, studying for my palliative medicine board exam this past Monday; and sunsets falling earlier, darkness settling in often before I leave the hospital for my short walk home. Long nights reading and writing by my desk lamp. The fall is bittersweet, as always. As the leaves change and the weather cools, I’m aware of a growing, desperate urge inside me, to see and do more, to live each day as fully as I can. There’s just not enough time for everything. At the same time, the progressing season reminds me that impermanence and change are very much the way of things. That I’m getting certainly older, and hopefully a little wiser, with each passing day. This time of year tends to lend perspective, and make the world around me feel all the more precious and beautiful. For that, I’m grateful.

With the exception of a short trip to coastal Maine in 2015, I’ve never seen New England at the height of autumn. In college, the academic calendar meant that my visits to Boston were usually timed with the Thanksgiving break. My memories of this place are mostly colored by rusty reds, barren treetops running together like smudged pencil drawings, and hillsides smoldering like day-old embers. So imagine my glee, cruising down the Pike to my fall driving playlist, as I pass pond after pond after pond lined by flaming maples, amber oaks, and birches crowned in gold, their colors reflected like a rainbow in the water. It’s mid-day and overcast with a layer of high clouds - soft, glowing light well-suited for foliage photography, though I’m keeping my expectations low for the golden hour. I’m drawn out of the city by my old co-fellow and friend Lindsey, who’s come up from Baltimore for the week to visit family in Massachusetts. After some late night brainstorming, followed by some extended negotiations (vague suggestions, really) over text, we meet at Moore State Park in the early afternoon. I make a quick pit stop at Indian Lake, in Worcester, before continuing west to join Lindsey and family.

As I hop out of the car, I’m greeted by Lindsey, her mom, and her poodle Lila, who, after a single ceremonial bark, instantly goes in for full-contact snuggles and snout rubs from the new human. After some canine cuddles and setting a plan for the afternoon, Lindsey’s mom drives off with Lila, while Lindsey and I go for a walk around the park. It’s the best kind of day for a walk - the air is crisp and clean, and the woods have the earthy, rich smell of fall. The leaves, piled thickly late now in the season, are crunchy underfoot. We pass by a landscape so typical of New England: a wide meadow bounded by a weathered stone fence, a remnant from the old times, when the rocky, glaciated soil was tilled by the earliest settlers. Lindsey brings me to a nearby trail which gently climbs through a corridor of majestic yellow oak and maple trees. Crouching down on the forest duff, I take vertical and horizontal compositions of this lovely, golden scene. We head back down and continue our stroll around the park, along a path lined by massive rhododendron bushes. We detour to the nearby pond, and to a derelict sawmill tucked against a series of falls, all the while talking about anything and everything: work, life, family, winter clothes, the latest happenings in my old favorite city. It occurs to me that, after a few months of uprootedness, in a new city amidst a historic pandemic, I’d actually forgotten just how nice it is to be around a friend. To ramble without goal or direction, laugh at impossibly stupid things, and not really think about being thoughtful enough, or interesting at all. It really was something I’d taken for granted.

Back in the car, we set off toward Quabbin Reservoir, our second stop of the afternoon. The route takes us west along winding country roads, past farm stands, pumpkin patches, and yards festooned in flags and campaign signs (some of which draw objection from Lindsey in the passenger seat). For the most part, we’re admiring the foliage, windows down to feel the landscape as it sweeps past: rolling hillsides, lakes and creeks, woods awash with color, farmhouses protected by windbreaks. In short succession, we pass by two scenes that speak to dual realities in western Massachusetts: a beautiful, historic church and village green in North Brookfield, and a shuttered, ramshackle Main Street in the old mill town of Ware, these days looking more like a ghost town than anything else. We muse on what it would be like to move out to this gritty, beautiful slice of Americana, and live disconnected from the city, and our work, and the world as we’ve known it.

West of Ware, we reach the middle entrance for Quabbin Reservoir, a massive, two-pronged lake that was created with the construction of Winsor Dam and Goodnough Dike in the 1930s, blocking off the egress of the Swift River and flooding the river valley along with several hamlets in Hampshire County. Today, the reservoir is the largest freshwater body in Massachusetts, and supplies much of the drinking water for Greater Boston. Despite having spent most of her high school and college years quite close to here, Lindsey has never visited the reservoir proper, so we’re both seeing it with new eyes. The views open up toward the west as we wind our way up the forested drive, around a roundabout to a large and deserted dirt parking lot below the Quabbin Observation Tower. We walk to the top of the hill, where we’re greeted by an impressive view: just beyond the trees, the hillside falls away toward the reservoir below, and across the water, behind layers of foliage, the ridgeline of the Holyoke Range rises out of the earth. Far beyond them sits an even taller, distant shadow - the Berkshires and the highlands of western Massachusetts, lit in places by sunbeams piercing through the dense grey clouds. I take some long shots with the camera, and we go for a selfie after circling the observation tower.

Down from the tower, we cross to the other end of the parking lot, where the trees open up on another view to the east: a different section of the reservoir, fronted by more rolling hills, golden oaks and birches, and a foreground meadow of bracken, blueberry, and barberry bush - with colors as varied as a painter’s palette. Lindsey and I hop onto a nearby rock and trade shots of each other; clumsy and inexperienced as I am with portraits, I manage to snap a few of her looking glamorous with the foliage. Rather than walk through the woods from the hilltop, we head back to the car and proceed a short distance down the road, to the Enfield Lookout. There, we find yet another incredible panorama, an expansive view which gazes across most of the southern reservoir, and encompasses some of the islands and mountain peaks to the east as well. This is my favorite kind of scene for long shots - using my camera’s 200mm, I try to magnify the many layers of wood and water, and pick out interesting features in the blue, faded distance of the horizon. Lindsey, meanwhile, takes panoramas with her phone, and crouches down to focus on the colorful golden flowers and vermilion berries of the bittersweet vine, whose curled, wreath-like stems surround us on the slope.

From the lookout, we head back down toward the entrance area, where Lindsey’s mom plans to meet us to spare me from bringing Lindsey home at the end of the day. I laugh as Lindsey attempts to navigate her mom toward us, which reminds me more of echolocation than conventional direction-giving. “I think you’re getting closer,” Lindsey says over speakerphone after her mom rattles off a series of town names or highway numbers - then, to me under her breath, “I have no idea where she’s gotten herself…” After a few rounds of this, they finally agree to trade GPS locations. All the while, we drive down the hillside at a crawl, stopping for any vista worth photographing and exploring. Lindsey rolls the window down as we descend toward the reservoir. Parked at the bottom of the road, we walk toward the dam, where we find a scene so beautiful it’s mind-boggling: a fenced trail beside the remnant creek-bed of the Swift River, perfectly curving toward the rounded mountaintop to the southwest. Surrounding the trail is a confluence of autumn color - golden, tawny, red hardwoods and verdant evergreens, the treetops fading in layers upon the hillside, and, bathing all of them, a lovely, late afternoon glow just behind the clouds. For the landscape photographer, a moment like this feels an awful lot like hitting the jackpot at slots in Vegas; it brings out my consummate photography nerd self. “Leading line, color, light. That’s a trifecta,” I intone breathlessly at Lindsey. “I think I need a new camera,” she replies. I take a few more portraits of her in front of this lovely view - simply too precious to pass up.

We’re soon joined by Lindsey’s mom, along with Lila, who looks absolutely ecstatic at the opportunity to take yet another walk today! Lila goes bounding ahead of us up the path as we walk onto the massive, earthen walls of Winsor Dam. The sun is sinking toward the horizon, casting lovely golden rays through the clouds to the west, and lighting the adjacent hillside, a colorful sea of treetops. On a nearby placard, we read, bemusedly, about the reservoir’s gull harassment program, which employs fire boats to hose down gull colonies in the name of clean drinking water. After a short stroll, we return to the cars where we bid farewell - until next time, of course. Sitting in the car, I respond to a few texts from colleagues back in the city before taking off for the long, straight shot back east on the Pike, the sun setting behind me in the growing darkness on the freeway. It’s a pleasant drive with reasonable traffic and my driving playlist blasting, and I make it back home with plenty of time to prepare dinner and get ready for the next day’s work. It’ll be a busy weekend of coverage in the hospital, but I’m feeling reinvigorated after all the spaciousness and beauty of the afternoon, the chance to take some of my favorite photographs this year, and a reunion, however short, with someone familiar amidst a season of change and doubt.

Cape Ann: Beverly and Rockport

The Bay State, like the Old Line State that preceded it in the chronology of our lives, is a big and beautiful place. In the short time we’ve lived here, we’ve already explored upland forests and rolling hillsides, glaciated farmlands and kettle ponds, peat bogs and marsh fens, and rocky coastlines dotted by seaside towns. Through the act of photographing, I’m starting to see our new home for the complicated, awe-inspiring land that it is. Complicated, because it has very much complicated my attempts to rapidly fall in love with it, to quickly plug the deep pit of homesickness I still feel for Baltimore. Rather than the sense of re-discovery and adventure and newfound freedom I hoped the move would bring, my past four months have been colored by pain and conflict. Like a heart being tugged in one too many directions, a mind cluttered by a few too many memories. How can you replace something you’ve not truly left behind? Like Lot’s wife, is there no turning back? And what does it mean to go forward instead? I suppose I should know a thing or two about these questions. I’m experiencing, I believe, what my profession calls a grief reaction. Most mornings now, I think that to myself, and laugh, and sigh. I’m still working through it.

This October morning’s outing, tucked between both of our 30th birthdays, is my latest attempt at working through it. Driving north and east out of the city, we enter Essex County and Cape Ann, a finger of land pointing boldly into the Atlantic, fabled for its beaches, bays, and fishing villages. Just before sunrise, we arrive at West Beach on the outskirts of Beverly. The private beach’s lot is closed this early in the morning, so Jane parks the car on Main Street in Beverly Farms, while I hop out and set up near the beach’s ruined jetty. It is just past high tide, and the wooden beams in the sand look quite picturesque against the falling surf and the rising sun. As the sky and its blanket of cirrus clouds lighten through shades of maroon and mauve and lavender, I turn my attention to long shots of the outlying Misery Islands, which dot the bay to the south. To the east, a majestic oak tree on Chubb Point is becoming beautifully silhouetted against the morning light, and buoys are clanging beneath the distant harbor light of Manchester-by-the Sea. The scene is magical, to say the least.

After shooting for over an hour, I walk with Jane back to the car, over the tracks of the commuter rail in Beverly Farms. We continue our drive eastward, over the Annisquam River, to the town of Rockport at the cape’s very tip. Rockport’s beautiful little harbor, oft-visited by tourists, is still a draw even on this early Saturday morning in the COVID era; we see more than a few neck-slung cameras and fanny packs milling around. We walk the mostly deserted streets, stopping by the Roy Moore Lobster shack for delicious bowls of chowder, smoked salmon, clam and fish cakes, and an obligatory roll. Best cheat day breakfast, ever. After our meal, a little more browsing, during which Jane buys a baseball cap, and I buy a fridge magnet and a tuxedo cat doll that reminds me of Honeydew (may the silky fellow rest in pieces). And then, a gas stop and the hour-long drive back to Boston, passing the multitude of Salem-bound traffic in the other direction.