Sky Meadows State Park

Author's Comments

There is a version of Virginia that lives in the imagination of people who have never been to Virginia, and Sky Meadows is the place where that imagined landscape turns out to be real. Split-rail fences. Rolling pasture. Apple trees going bare in October. The trail climbs through all of it and then, near the ridge, the Piedmont opens below you in a long pastoral sweep that goes softer and bluer the farther your eye travels. I come here for the layering. A good overlook gives you a single strong horizon. A great one gives you four or five, stacked and fading, and the ridge trail at Sky Meadows is the latter. Late afternoon in mid-October is the hour I keep returning to. The light comes in low across the fields, catches the tops of the fences, moves slowly up the hollows, and the far ridges go the particular blue that the mountains are named for. Spring has its own argument. The meadows come in green before the trees fully leaf out, and the views stay open longer into the morning. But fall is when this place earns its reputation. Bring a wide lens and a longer one both. The panorama wants the wide. The layered ridges want compression. And give yourself enough time to sit at the top, because the light changes quickly up there and the best frame is almost never the first one you make.

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