Mount Sugarloaf State Reservation

Author's Comments

You climb a small mountain and look down at a painting. That is the honest description of Mount Sugarloaf, because the view from the summit is the same view Thomas Cole composed in 1836, and the oxbow of the Connecticut River still bends through the valley exactly as he saw it. The river has not moved. The fields have not really changed. There is something disorienting about standing at an overlook and recognizing the geography from a canvas you first saw in a museum. The summit itself is modest - a red sandstone observation deck, a parking lot, a few benches - and the climb is short enough that the auto road handles most of the work. What earns the trip is the breadth of what opens up. The Pioneer Valley laid out below in agricultural patchwork, the Berkshires gathering blue in the distance, and the river doing the slow improbable curve that has fixed this place in American landscape painting for nearly two centuries. Mid-October is the obvious answer and it is the right one. The valley peaks before the ridge does, which means the patchwork below goes fully into color while the hills behind hold their darker tones, and the contrast is what makes the photograph. Golden hour is when the oxbow itself catches light and the river turns from gray to something warmer. Bring a wide lens. The composition wants room to breathe. And do not be in a hurry to leave once the sun drops, because the valley holds light longer than the summit does, and the last good frame of the evening is usually ten minutes after you thought you were done.

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