River’s Edge: Treelines, Reflections & Floodplains
Barton Cove, Connecticut River
If you zoom in on the map of Western Massachusetts, centering on the thin ribbon meandering from north to south roughly along the length of Interstate 91 that demarcates the Connecticut River, a profile of a face seems to appear on the topography. To the north, starting at South Deerfield on the west and Sunderland on the east, a gentle westward curve of the ribbon delineates the forehead, placing the eye of the profile beneath the knobby brow of South Sugarloaf Mountain. Moving south, the ribbon curves gently, steadily back to the east along the berry fields of Whatley and North Hatfield on the west sits the bridge of a nose on which to perch glasses. Then, in Hatfield, the ribbon juts sharply east, bulbing out into Hadley to the east. It then abruptly and improbably cuts north and west, outlining the nose, the nostril fixed at Bashin Beach, an anomalous bank of sand for bonfires and camping—“a lovely sandy spot where you can beach and relax.” The upper lip arches the ribbon slightly to the east along Hatfield’s Main Street, then, the chin, stubbled with corn and potato fields, juts eastward before abruptly sweeping west along an uncharacteristic stretch of the Connecticut that runs east/west. The profile continues into Northampton, the River bulging east again, blocked in its flow by the Holyoke Range, resulting in what could be imagined a cravat or boutonniere, ending in the clasp of the Oxbow. It was on the banks of the Connecticut River, along a couple of other local places, that I first immersed myself in landscape photography, tracing my way along the face on the map, set into profile by the vagaries of time and geology.
Growing up for a time very near the banks of both the Hudson and the Merrimack Rivers, a long-time, secret box was checked when, as an adult, my family moved into the small red farmhouse—complete with red, dirt-floor barn adorned with a rooster weather vane perched on a slate roof—in view of the Connecticut River. The squat little home, sulking behind two enormous Norway Maples, was set among the potato fields scruffing the chin on the face of the river. Across the fields, a dike wall that edged the river’s chin, protecting those fields and farmhouses from flooding. Long before I purchased my first interchangeable lens camera, I’d religiously amble along the dike wall, catching the dawn creep over the canopy on the eastern banks and shimmer across the flow water, coursing south to the Atlantic. Countless evenings, from the couch in my living room, my wife and I sat mesmerized looking east as the sun set while the shadow of the earth rose above the river, segmenting the sky in an array of pastels, as vibrant and delicate as anything painted by an impressionist master at the peak of their powers.
Hadley, Massachusetts from the Hatfield side.
By August of 2018, when I had bought that camera for a trip, we had moved from our little red farm house, to another house just over a mile north. There, the yard stretched to the river itself, its flow a permeant backdrop to a massive, weathered tobacco barn, sat like beached schooner perched on the woody banks. Over the next several years I explored the face of the river with my camera, enthralled with the knife edge reflections of treelines in dawn’s colorful glow and the bottomlands that edged the face of the river. I also explored extensively, along with other nearby areas, the fields and furrows of Hatfield fine soil deposited eons ago by the ambulation of the river. The Town has boasted that “Hatfield has some of the most fertile agricultural soils in the state, the country, and possibly the world.” But it was on the river’s edge, on the soft banks that yielded gently to the legs of my tripod, that the seed of the obsession that lead me here was planted.
Hadley, Massachusetts from the Hatfield side.
Be sure to come back next week for Face of the River: a Gallery
Considered low hanging fruit to many if not cliché, reflection photography offered me an opportunity to explore not only the vagaries of light and weather—as well as my commitment on those mornings when ice edged and even choked the river—it offered a springboard into the complexities of composition. It showed me that the basic rules of composing an image were mere guides and not dictates from on high. It also gave me the opportunity to learn that going outside the bounds of those guides should be approached with caution, but not fear and that learning is almost as much about failing as it is about getting it right. But most of all, as I sit here and write this, what it really gave me was experience. Not merely in the sense that I gained experience from those efforts. But more significantly, those experiences themselves remain with me, nearly tangible. They remain and fill me still with more than a shadow of the joy I felt sat in the early morning chill on the damp bank, the sky a canvass slowly coming to life, its smile mirrored in the river, the teeth of the treeline sharpening in the lifting light. Even now, I am there still, night shifting to day, cold blue light going gold, pink and warm, poised to add to my reverie, walking a tightline of joy strung between simply being in nature and being there in thoughtful, creative engagement.
—Doug Butler
Hatfield, Massachusetts