Loch Raven Reservoir

Author's Comments

The first time I saw Loch Raven with fog on it I pulled the car over and sat for twenty minutes before I even took the camera out. That is the kind of place this is. Baltimore's water supply sits in a ring of forest just north of Towson, and on the right October morning the surface goes entirely white, the trees on the far bank reduce to silhouettes, and the stone dam emerges from the mist like something older than the city it serves. The western bank road is closed to cars, which changes everything. You can walk it in near-silence, stopping wherever the light asks you to, and the reservoir reveals itself in sections as the road bends. The fall color here is genuinely unusual for how accessible it is - not a hike, not a drive up a mountain, just a walk along a quiet paved road with a 2,400-acre reflecting pool beside you. The maples go first, then the oaks hold the color into early November when most of the region has gone bare. Come before sunrise if you want the mist. It burns off fast once the light gets on the water, and by nine in the morning you are working with a different place entirely. Golden hour in the late afternoon is the other window - the western light rakes across the dam and the reservoir goes gold and copper for maybe thirty minutes before it does not. The crowds stay light even on weekends. I have walked the road in peak October and passed fewer than a dozen people.

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