Baltimore: Beauty Begins at Home

One of the most satisfying aspects of living in Baltimore is our proximity to the woodlands and watersheds of the Chesapeake region. In less than half an hour, we can leave the city behind and escape to a quiet lakeside, a coastal vista, or a lovely clearing in the forest. And quite unlike traveling to faraway lands for landscape photography, when one visits the same locations time after time, season after season, a special kind of beauty emerges - the beauty that comes from knowing a place deeply, from understanding what parts of it change and progress over months and years, and what parts stay unyielding and eternal. In this way, photography has helped me fall in love with my surroundings here in Maryland. It has helped me discover the beauty of a place called “home”.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic, the seasons are gradual. The weather is mild, and change happens slowly. Autumn is when the natural world is the loveliest, the most fleeting, and the most profoundly affecting. It is no surprise that my favorite photos are usually created during this time, and every year, Jane and I look forward to the fall walking season - the brief span of four to six weeks when the temperature is perfect for being outdoors, the trees are ablaze with color, and no composition seems too insignificant to pass over. During these weeks, no matter how busy we are or how many consecutive days I’ve worked in the hospital, every available sunrise must be spent in the woods.

The photos from this year’s autumn set were taken on three occasions:

October 21, 2018: A walk with our friends Ali and Ashley, along the Merryman Trail on the western side of Loch Raven. The oak leaves are still predominantly green, though they shows signs of turning. We re-visit a place we first discovered in 2015 - a small waterfall barely two miles from the road, where a creek empties into an inlet of the lake. The log spanning the waterfall, which we posed on back then, has split and sunk into the water since last year, replaced by a taller fallen oak that bridges the adjoining hillside.

October 30, 2018: Peak colors here in Maryland. Taking advantage of a mid-week break from the hospital, I drive to Liberty Reservoir for sunrise. Despite several visits in preceding falls, it is my first time seeing my favorite place in the region (Piney Point) in full autumn glory. I shoot a composition with a fallen log that I first photographed in 2016 - this time from its other side, facing the nearby shore with its crown of flaming maples and incandescent birches. The images speak for themselves.

November 4, 2018: A ramble along the Buzzard Rock and Cascade trails in the Hilton and Avalon regions along the Patapsco River. From atop Buzzard Rock, it is heartening to see the ruins of Bloede Dam, which was demolished earlier in the year. After over a century, the Patapsco is finally freed, and again the migratory herring, shad, and catadromous eels have access to the river. The forest is beginning to coalesce into a sea of golden amber, and the ground cover has become soft and immense. Within another two weeks, the colors will fade to russet tones, and the crunch of the fallen leaves will herald the end of autumn, and the oncoming shoulder season before winter’s frost.

Shenandoah: Waterfalls of the Blue Ridge

After four years, we come full circle, and the blog returns to where it began all those autumns ago - in the mountains and river valleys of Shenandoah National Park. The subject of these photos is a three-day trip that we undertook during the fall vacation of my final year of residency; back then, I was a 3rd year medical student, just on the cusp of my first rotation in internal medicine. Much has changed in the intervening years. We’re a few years older, a bit more tired of things, and hopefully a little wiser at times. We’ve lost friends and family, but gained a marriage and an interesting home life with two cats. Many things are still in flux. But the beauty of the Blue Ridge - and my love for it as a photographer and a walker - is something eternal. This is the old country, and the old country never changes. It will be here until the rolling Piedmont is ground into dust, and carried off to the sea.

We start the trip in a downpour. With one of the largest storm systems of the year blanketing Maryland and Virginia, and nowhere we can safely or drily hike, we make a late start from Baltimore and casually round the Capital Beltway in the early afternoon. We proceed west from the District, bypassing the little town of Warrenton where we stopped for breakfast years ago. Around mid-afternoon, after following the Lee Highway through the grey, battered countryside for an hour, we reach Thornton Gap and turn off onto Skyline Drive. As beautiful as it is in clear, radiant weather, the Drive has a different kind of allure in the rain. Wisps of cloud and fog are delicately laced upon each curving valley, and when the road delivers you to a ridgetop overlook, it is like staring straight into the face of the thunderstorm - an anvilhead soaring into the skies, brimming with sound and fury. We proceed directly to the Skyland Resort, where we receive the keys to our cabin - a wooden hotel room in a clearing in the woods. After unloading our car in the rain - hiking gear, weather gear, photography gear, and several Safeway bags loaded with goodies (beef jerky, snack crackers, dried fruit, chocolate croissants, fruit gummies, milk and juice) - we hide away for the afternoon, watching TV in our room as the sky comes down in curtains. We leave the cabin only to browse resort’s gift shop (purchasing, as usual, a fridge magnet) and to have dinner at the Skyland dining room - bison meatloaf, pot roast, and fingerling potatoes with grilled vegetables.

On our second day, we leave Skyland in the dark to catch sunrise at the Hazel Mountain Overlook. I attempt to set up for a timelapse, but the pre-dawn air is freezing, and the powerful updrafts along the mountain prove to be too much for my lightweight retractable tripod. We retreat to the car and proceed south, stopping at the Old Rag Overlook to watch the sun come up over the lovely granite mound that we made such an effort to summit in 2014. Further south along Skyline Drive, past the Big Meadows and their elaborate campgrounds, we reach the South River Valley and the trailhead for our first hike of the trip - a 6-mile roundtrip to the base of South River Falls. By virtue of starting from one point or another along the Drive, Shenandoah’s hiking trails are almost uniformly steep - either a descent into a canyon or gully following a waterway, or a climb to the top of a nearby peak. The timing of our trip, though a week or two early for peak fall foliage, is perfect for waterfall-hunting; with the storm having just passed, the woodland soil is soaked through, the rivers are beautifully strong, and everywhere we look, the mountainsides are laced by rivulets of running water. We hairpin down the side of the valley, joining the South River as it flows through the forest, transforming from a bubbling stream into a broad and fast current. Past the falls’ upper overlook, where we see the top tier of the cataract gush over a rock cliff, we circle downriver and climb back an additional mile to the base of the falls. The two-tiered waterfall thunders powerfully down the canyon wall, emptying into a crystal-clear pool surrounded by cedars and hemlocks. It is a lovely place, and well worth the extra effort to reach.

After an arduous, long climb back to our starting point, we return to the Big Meadows and sit down for lunch at the lodge. Jane orders a Reuben on rye, while I opt for a bread bowl full of broccoli cheddar soup; we share an appetizer of buffalo wings. Fed and hydrated, we move a short way down the road to the busy Dark Hollow trailhead. My knee ache, which has lingered ever since climbing up and down the sheep trails of the Faroe Islands, begins to act up as we make this second descent of the day - a short, less than a mile jaunt to the base of the Dark Hollow Falls. Walking geriatrically, I lean on a tall walking stick that Jane carved out an oak branch on the trail above the South River; it stays with us for the rest of the trip, and even goes home with us to Baltimore, where it is sitting in the backseat of our car. After a brief walk, we arrive at the falls, a gorgeous, multiple-tiered cascade down moss-covered granite that is one of the most beautifully formed waterfalls I have ever seen - in Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland, or anywhere. Sharing the space with other tourists, I take several long exposures of the falls - close and wide compositions, as well as a few photographs with Jane sitting beside the falls, walking stick in hand.

Later in the afternoon, after some rest and recuperation at Skyland, we walk across the road from our cabin to join the forest trail to Millers Head, a prominent hilltop that juts out from the high mountain plateau upon which the resort was built in 1895 by George Freeman Pollock. Pollock created what became Skyland from his family’s land, advertising it as a camp and wilderness retreat for East Coast urbanites looking for adventure. He is credited to this day for boosting and preserving his pocket of the Blue Ridge rather than exploiting its natural wealth, at a time when the idea of a Shenandoah National Park had not yet been conceived. It was eventually created in large part due to his efforts - much to the consternation of the mountain men and backcountry families that once dwelled in these hills and hollows before they were bought out (or forced out) by the federal government. Their derelict cabins and farmsteads, now overgrown by the encroaching forest, can still be seen to this day.

The trail first climbs to a radio mast on a hilltop at the edge of Skyland, then descends the mountain along a rocky slope, before leveling out on a flat promontory leading to Millers Head. This flat portion of the trail is lovely in the late afternoon light, the golden sunrays filtering through a canopy of glowing deciduous leaves, falling upon the dulcet brown matter of the forest floor. As we usually do most of our hiking in the early mornings, and have yet to truly camp or live in the woods of the Mid-Atlantic, this sunset walk is a memorable one. Atop Millers Head, we reach a concrete viewing platform, where we are treated a broad panorama encompassing the Shenandoah River Valley with its towns of Luray and Stanley, and beyond them, another faraway ridge. We linger here for awhile, watching the sun gradually slant toward the mountains of West Virginia. Afterwards, we retrace our steps through the woods and back up and down to Skyland. The autumn forest at sunset grows lovelier by the minute as the light diminishes.

Back at the resort, the last rays of the sun are just fading from the pink granite face of Stony Man, which overlooks the plateau. We head to the Mountain Taproom - a casual dive next to the more formal and atrociously packed dining room - and enjoy a quick dinner of cheeseburgers and a big bowl of sherried crab soup. I nearly order dessert but waver at the last moment, convincing myself that we have plenty of sweets and snacks in our stash back at the cabin. After dinner, it’s another late night watching TV (a luxury to me and Jane, who don’t miss having a television until we’re presented with one) - we marathon multiple episodes of The Office, and Jane watches the bulk of Terminator 2 for the first time.

On our third and final day in the park, we sleep in and skip sunrise, as a low-lying fog bank, thick as a bone broth, has descended over the ridge. Peeking out of our windows in the morning, I can barely see the outline of the next cabin twenty feet away. After a casual breakfast of croissants and juice in our cabin, we set off through the moody grey mist to the empty Upper Hawksbill parking lot, bypassing the developing throng of cars at Hawksbill Gap to take a backdoor route up Hawksbill Mountain. The climb is a brief one - just over a mile each way - and rises five hundred feet to the highest point of elevation in the park. At Hawksbill’s summit, we finally emerge above the fog, attaining clarity of view for miles all around. The wind-blasted clouds go racing by through the valley below, crashing upon the forested mountain slopes much like ocean waves breaking on a rocky headland. I climb among the rocks at the summit, taking a mixture of stitched panoramas and close compositions, while Jane alternately poses or takes cover from the wind. After some time, we return down the mountain the same way we came. I’m again using the walking stick to support my knee down the gravel slope, and get repeatedly passed mid-step by youngsters wearing yoga pants and tennis shoes - though, to be fair, they look for their part to be freezing their butts off.

We spend the middle of the day on two relaxed walks. The first is a self-guided ramble through the sedges and blueberry bushes of the Big Meadows, which ends in us smartly rambling our way into the fens at the center of the meadow, sinking foot-deep into the sucking mud and utterly soaking our boots as we cut through the swamp to escape. The second is an easy stroll along the crushed greenstone path of the Limberlost, a former section of old-growth hemlock forest near Skyland (now mostly young oaks admixed with spruces and pines) where Jane and I seem to be the youngest visitors by several decades. Lack of adventure aside, the Limberlost still makes for a beautiful walk, with the soaring deciduous canopies forming a lovely, colorful tunnel for the path.

Towards evening, after an afternoon nap at the cabin, we set off on the short lariat hike to the summit of Stony Man - the ever-popular mountain that George Pollock fell in love with, and brought visitors to constantly to watch sunset, or to have picnics. Of all the places in the park, Pollock’s spirit is most alive and present on this mountain, and I believe he would be glad to see that throngs of tourists still congregate at its knobby, rock-strewn summit on any clear-weathered afternoon, to watch the sun arc over Skyland, pass the rolling mountains, and dip like an orb of fire into the Shenandoah River Valley. I set up for a timelapse above a racecourse of shattered rocks, while Jane goes off to explore the bald top of the summit. I hear excited cries and screams of joy from the adjacent peak; Jane comes back a minute later and says that she witnessed - and was asked to photograph - a marriage proposal between two young women. “Darn! I hope the pictures were okay,” Jane frets. “I kept telling them, I wish it was you there instead!” “Uh-huh,” I murmur in a very husbandly way, barely glancing up from my timelapse. The joy of photography: it is a beautiful thing, and can manifest in so many different ways.

After sunset, we race our way down the mountain, hoping (and failing) to beat the significant dinner crowd amassing outside of the Skyland dining room. Fortunately, we manage to sneak into the equally crowded taproom, where I order a cheesesteak (interestingly and unabashedly made from the same pot roast we had two nights prior) and Jane orders a bucket of fish and chips. We also enjoy a dessert (or is an appetizer?) of blueberry cobbler à la mode, which we have our waiter bring out concurrently with our meals in the interest of time (Jane and I are occasional romantics, but it rarely manifests while eating out on vacation. In this arena, efficiency and caloric value tend to dominate our decision-making). After another night of TV, we drive back in the morning, returning to Baltimore around noon on Sunday, the day before Jane’s birthday. I spend most of the following day grocery shopping for her birthday dinner - a homemade bouillabaisse served with chocolate cake.

Larriland Farm: Summer Harvest

Another year, another trip out to Larriland Farm out in Woodbine, MD. This time, we visit the peach orchards across the road from the main farm, where rows and rows of yellow and white freestone peaches are ripening under the brilliant August sun. We take home a box of them, and we use them to make tins of frozen peach gelatin - a perfect summertime snack.

After picking our fruit, we head down the road to the main farmhouse, where a beautiful flower garden is in full bloom. We each buy a bottle of fruit cider and a bag of  mango, peach, and apple jellies, before heading back to the city to complete the rest of our weekend chores.