Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Author's Comments

Winter is the season. Not fall, despite what the brochures suggest. December through February is when the marshes at Blackwater become something I cannot find anywhere else on the East Coast - three hundred bald eagles, sometimes more, perched in the loblolly pines at the edges of the impoundments, and the light at dawn coming across the water low and pink and almost painfully clean. The Wildlife Drive is the thing. Four miles of one-way road through the marsh, and you stay in your car, which the birds have come to tolerate in a way they will not tolerate you on foot. I have made this drive a dozen times and I still find myself surprised by what appears - a northern harrier working the grass at window height, a river otter crossing the road without hurry, a flock of snow geese lifting off a distant pond in a sound you feel before you hear. The light at golden hour turns the spartina a color that does not quite exist in other landscapes. Copper and rust and something almost lavender in the shadows. Bring the longest lens you own. A 500mm earns its weight here, but I have made photographs I am proud of with a 300mm resting on a rolled-up jacket in the car window. The crowds are almost nonexistent in winter, which is part of the gift. You will hear the wind in the phragmites and the distant calls of tundra swans and very little else. Cambridge is two hours from DC and feels like another country entirely. Come before sunrise. Stay through the warm hour after.

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