National Arboretum Columns

Author's Comments

The first time I came upon them I did not quite believe what I was looking at. Twenty-two sandstone columns standing in a meadow at the edge of the arboretum, arranged with the authority of a ruin but too intact to be one. They once held up the east portico of the Capitol. Now they hold up nothing, and that is the whole point. The columns photograph best in late afternoon when the western light comes in low and warms the sandstone to something close to amber. The scale is genuinely Roman, which is disorienting in a grassy field in northeast DC. A figure walking between the columns gives the frame what it needs. Without one, the eye has trouble finding purchase. I prefer May here, when wildflowers come up at the base and the grass has not yet gone summer-brown, or late October when the surrounding trees turn and the color wraps the meadow in something warmer than the stone. Weekday mornings you will likely have the place to yourself. I have spent an hour here and seen three people. That is rare in this city, and it is part of why I keep the location close.

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