Georgetown Canal Towpath

Author's Comments

There is a strange and welcome dislocation that happens when you drop down from M Street onto the towpath. The noise of Georgetown falls away in about ten steps. The canal takes over - still water, stone walls darkened by a century and a half of weather, the backs of rowhouses leaning in close enough that you can see the iron fire escapes and the rear gardens that nobody was meant to notice. I walk west toward Lock 4 when I want the quieter version. The path thins, the buildings give way, and the canal starts to feel less like a curated piece of the city and more like something the city forgot to pave over. In October the sycamores and maples throw their color down onto the water and the reflections go gold and rust and impossibly still. Early mornings are the hour I keep returning to. Mist sits on the canal until the sun clears the rooflines, and the towpath belongs almost entirely to the dog walkers and the occasional jogger. The photograph I have been chasing here is the one where the lock house, the water, and the reflection of a rowhouse facade all resolve into a single quiet frame. It is a narrow composition. It requires the light to be exactly right and the surface of the canal to be untouched. I have made it maybe twice in four years of trying. That is part of why I keep going back.

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