Bridge of Flowers

Author's Comments

I have mixed feelings about this bridge, and I think that is worth being honest about. The Bridge of Flowers is genuinely beautiful in the way a well-tended garden is beautiful, and the concept - a trolley bridge given over to volunteer gardeners since 1929 - is the kind of New England story I find myself rooting for. But it photographs harder than it looks. The wide shot from either riverbank flattens the bridge into a green stripe, and the flowers themselves want to be seen close, one variety at a time, in the way you would see them in a garden rather than a landscape. So I have learned to come for the details. Mid-June through early August, before eight in the morning, when the river fog is still lifting off the Deerfield and the gardeners are sometimes already at work. The light at that hour is soft enough to hold the color of the blooms without blowing them out, and the bridge is quiet. A macro lens earns its keep here more than a wide one. I look for the single flower against the weathered stone of the bridge wall, the hover of a bee, the way the path narrows and pulls the eye through. The glacial potholes are a five-minute walk and worth the detour. Shelburne Falls itself is small enough to wander in an hour. I would not drive three hours for the bridge alone, but as part of a slow morning in the hill towns, with coffee and a long lens and no particular agenda, it gives back what you bring to it.

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