Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge

Author's Comments

The first time I came here I did not quite believe the map. You drive through Woodbridge, past the strip malls and the power lines, and then the road narrows and a gate opens onto something that should not exist in this landscape. The refuge was once a testing ground for chemical weapons. Now it is tidal marsh and meadow, and the bald eagles outnumber the visitors on most winter mornings. I come in November and December, when the light goes long and low across the impoundments and the migratory birds have settled in. The observation platform on the west side is where I have had my best eagle mornings, but the falcons are the stranger gift - peregrines nesting on the power line towers, hunting the open water, a species that does not care that the industrial edge of the refuge is visible from the same frame as the raptor in flight. That tension is the actual subject here. The grasses going copper, the transmission lines marching across the horizon, the eagle on a snag in between. Fall migration brings the shorebirds, and the count runs past a hundred species in a good year. Most of them are small and far and you will need more lens than you brought. Come at golden hour. Walk slowly. The refuge is quiet in a way that most places within forty minutes of DC no longer are, and that quiet is part of what it offers.

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