Riverbend Park

Author's Comments

Riverbend is the quieter sibling. Great Falls proper sits just downstream and gets all the attention, and the overflow parking and the crowds, while Riverbend sits upstream in a stretch of the Potomac that still feels like a river rather than a spectacle. The water moves fast here but it has not yet gathered itself into the drama of the falls. It is broader, calmer, more interested in the herons than in putting on a show. The rookery is the reason to come in April. From the riverside trail below the visitor center you can look across and see the nests high in the sycamores, the big grey birds coming and going with a prehistoric slowness that never quite stops being strange. Bring a long lens. The light is best in the last hour before sunset, when the west bank goes warm and the river picks up the color. In November and into winter the trees give up their leaves and the bluff trails finally show you the river. This is when I come for the landscape work rather than the wildlife. The water reads silver in low light, the rapids downstream are audible but not visible, and the woods are quiet in a way that feels earned. Twenty miles from the city and it does not feel like twenty miles.

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