Theodore Roosevelt Island

Author's Comments

The island does not announce itself. You cross a small footbridge from the Virginia side and the city does not so much disappear as go quiet, retreating behind a tree line that thickens quickly once you are past the entrance. For an island surrounded by the Potomac, visible from Georgetown and the Kennedy Center and half of Rosslyn, Theodore Roosevelt Island manages a surprising quality of seclusion. I came here first in late October, following a tip about the fall color. The forest is mostly hardwood and the foliage is dense enough that on a still afternoon the light inside the canopy goes amber in a way that feels earned. The marsh trail is slower going and worth every step of it. In November, after the leaves are mostly down, the Rosslyn skyline appears through the bare branches across the water in a way that is genuinely strange and lovely - glass towers framed by gray trunks, the Potomac flat and pewter-colored between them. It is the kind of juxtaposition the city rarely offers so cleanly. This is not a place for a dramatic photograph. The photographic score is low and it is honest. But there is something here that better-known places in this city do not have, which is the feeling of having wandered somewhere by accident. The trails are short, the monument to Roosevelt at the center is solemn and a little forgotten, and the birds do not seem to know they are in a capital city. Come in the morning in October. Come without expectations. Leave the wide lens in the bag and just walk.

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