Woodstock Tower

Author's Comments

The Shenandoah does something below Woodstock Tower that it does nowhere else on its course. It folds back on itself, not once but in a series of loops, seven of them visible from the stone platform at the summit, and the first time you see it you will probably stop talking. I did. The river moves like a thought that keeps reconsidering itself, silver in the right light, and from 2,600 feet the scale of the valley reveals how much space is actually between these ridges. The hike in is short by mountain standards. Four miles round trip, a gentle grade along the ridge road, nothing punishing. That is part of why I keep coming back. The ratio of effort to view is almost unfair. The stone tower itself is modest, a CCC-era structure that has weathered into the landscape, but it gives you just enough elevation above the treeline to open the whole panorama. Fall is the obvious season and it earns the reputation. The oxbow reads best when the color on the ridges has turned and the river still holds summer green, and that contrast is what a long lens is for. But I have made my favorite photograph here in late April, when the new leaves were that particular electric green that only lasts a week, and the haze had not yet arrived for the summer. Golden hour is the hour. The light comes in low from the west and the curves of the river catch it in sequence, one bend lighting up after another as the sun drops. The crowds do not really come here. That is the last thing worth saying.

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