Stark Covered Bridge and Village

Author's Comments

Some scenes feel composed before you arrive, as if the village had been arranged a century and a half ago for the convenience of a photographer who had not yet been born. Stark is one of those. The covered bridge sits low across the Upper Ammonoosuc, its dark red siding weathered into something closer to rust than paint, and directly behind it the Union Church rises white and steepled against the hillside. The two structures align almost too perfectly. I have stood at the roadside pullout on Route 110 trying to find a frame that does not work, and I have not yet succeeded. Late afternoon is the hour. The hillside behind the church catches warm light when the bridge is already falling into shadow, and the contrast holds the composition together. In October the background goes brilliant and the scene becomes the postcard everyone expects. I find I prefer it in other seasons. February, when the river runs dark between snowbanks and the white church reads almost as sky. Late May, when the hill is the soft green of new leaves and the whole village looks freshly washed. The details are worth the walk across the bridge itself. The Paddleford truss is a New England specificity, and the joinery inside the bridge is honest carpentry of a kind that does not get built anymore. Light comes through the gaps in the siding in narrow bars. The river sounds different from inside than from the bank. Stark has fewer than six hundred people and the village does not perform for visitors. That is part of why it works. You pull over, you make your photograph, and the place goes on being itself.

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