Halibut Point State Park

Author's Comments

Cape Ann ends here, at a pile of granite that the Atlantic has been working on for longer than anyone can usefully imagine. The quarry is the surprise - a still turquoise rectangle held in stone, abandoned almost a century ago and now so quiet you can hear the ocean working on the other side of the berm. I like to walk the quarry first, while the light is still low and the water holds the sky without any wind to break it. Then over the rise, and the coast opens. The ledges face north across Ipswich Bay, and on a clear morning you can pick out the hills of southern Maine on the horizon, blue on blue. This is a coastline that asks for patience. The granite goes on in flat shelves and tilted slabs, and the waves find the seams and throw spray in ways you cannot predict. I have stood on those ledges in early October waiting for one wave that did what I wanted, and watched a hundred that did not, and gone home anyway happy. A long exposure flattens the water into something like silk against the dark stone, and that is one photograph worth making. The other is closer in - the tidepools, the lichen on the rocks, the small geometries that the ocean has carved into granite that does not give easily. Both photographs reward an early start. The parking lot is small and the summer crowds arrive by mid-morning, but if you are out on the ledges by seven you will mostly have them to yourself, and the light will still be doing its best work.

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