Rocky Gap State Park

Author's Comments

Lake Habeeb does not look like Maryland. That is the first thing, and it keeps being the thing even after you have been there enough times to expect it. The water reads genuinely blue, not the green-brown of most Appalachian lakes, and the ridges fold in on either side in a way that compresses the view and makes the scale difficult to place. I have shown people photographs from here without saying where they were taken, and the guesses tend to land somewhere in upstate New York. The narrows are where I set up. The lake pinches between two forested shoulders of ridge, and that compression is the composition - foreground water, the gap framing the middle distance, the far basin opening behind. Morning is non-negotiable. The lake sits in a bowl and the wind picks up by mid-morning almost every day, and once it does the reflections are gone until the following dawn. I have driven out the night before more than once just to be there when the water was still glass. Fall is the obvious season and it delivers, but I have come to prefer the first week of May when the new leaves are that particular acid green that only lasts a few days. The cliffs on the north side hold their drama year-round. Most visitors come for the beach and the lodge and never walk the quieter shoreline trails, which means the best compositions are usually yours alone if you are willing to be out before the park fully wakes up.

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