Monocacy Aqueduct

Author's Comments

The first time I found the Monocacy Aqueduct I had been driving back roads for an hour and had mostly given up on the afternoon. Then the towpath opened and there it was - seven arches of pale quarry stone crossing the river as if it had been there forever, which in a certain sense it has. The thing is almost two hundred years old and it still carries the canal bed across the Monocacy without fuss or ornament. That is what gets me about it. There is no visitor center, no signage beyond the practical, no crowd. Come in the morning. The east light hits the stone directly and the arches throw clean shadows onto the water below, and if you walk out onto the towpath and turn to face the aqueduct head-on, you get the photograph that the place actually offers - the full span, the repetition of the arches, the river moving underneath. Spring is generous here because the trees have not yet closed in. Fall works too, when the color frames the stone without overwhelming it. I tend to linger longer than I planned. There is something about engineering this old and this quiet that asks you to stay a while. The canal walkers pass through in ones and twos. A heron sometimes works the shallows. The stone goes from cool gray to warm ivory as the sun climbs, and the photograph you make at eight is not the photograph you make at ten. Bring a wide lens. Bring time. This is one of those places that rewards you for knowing it is there.

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