Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

Author's Comments

There is a stretch of the Anacostia that most of the city has never visited, and on its eastern bank sits one of the quietest places I know. Kenilworth does not announce itself. You turn off a road that does not feel like it leads anywhere in particular, you park in a small lot, and then you walk a short path and the ponds open in front of you like something you were not supposed to find. July is when it happens. The lotus rise on stalks taller than you expect, the blooms the size of open hands, and the pads spread wide enough across the water that the surface disappears under them. Water lilies work a longer season, June into September, but the lotus are the reason to come. They open at dawn and close by mid-morning, which means the window is narrow and the light is generous inside it. Arrive by seven. Earlier if you can. I tend to work two lenses here. A macro for the particular geometry of a single bloom, the way the petals hold water and the center goes almost architectural. And something wider for the ponds themselves, the reflections when the air is still, the herons stepping carefully through the shallows. Both photographs are worth making. Neither is the one most visitors to DC come home with, which is part of why I keep returning. The park stays quiet even in peak bloom. I have been here on a Saturday in July and shared the boardwalks with maybe a dozen people. That is the gift of this place. It is spectacular and almost nobody knows.

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