Little Bennett Regional Park

Author's Comments

Virginia bluebells do not announce themselves. You are walking along Stoney Brook in late March, the trees still bare, the light coming through without interruption, and then suddenly the floodplain is blue. Not a few scattered flowers but a full blue ground cover running along the creek corridor, soft and improbable in the gray-brown palette of early spring. I have seen this happen and still do not entirely trust my memory of it. Little Bennett is Montgomery County's largest park and one of its least visited, which is saying something. The 3,700 acres hold upland forest, open meadow, and several stream valleys, and outside of wildflower season it receives the kind of quiet attention that a place this size deserves. In April the meadows are starting to green and the streams are running well from snowmelt. The light in the valley is soft almost all morning. The campground sits far enough from any road that the sky at night is genuinely dark, which is a rare thing this close to the suburban corridor. I have not made the night photographs I want here yet. The meadow edge with stars overhead is a composition that keeps pulling at me, and one of these springs I will stay late enough to try it properly. Come for the bluebells before the canopy closes. Come before ten in the morning when the low light reaches the stream level and the flowers are still holding dew. This is a quiet park that earns its quiet.

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