Tufts of parched marsh reeds catch stray sunlight as a welcoming March day comes to a close in Northern Connecticut. Snow may have vanished from the lake shore, but winter surreptitiously lingers forth in an icy glaze which grips the deepening shadows.
“Great Pond” seems a rather dramatic title for an ancient, marshy lake of just 25 acres in the north of Simsbury. But despite being carved by brooks and draped with several serpentine miles of the Farmington River, the town peculiarly lacks many standing bodies of water. Great Pond, as it would happen, is the largest lake in Simsbury.
And while much can be said about its history, perhaps the most novel story of Great Pond arose in 1942 when a box turtle was discovered beside the lake with “C.E.B. 1877” etched into its shell. Lo and behold, local man Clayton E. Bacon, who was 83 years old at that time, got wind of the find and confirmed that he’d scratched his initials into the turtle’s shell as a teenager 65 years earlier! Having made the local news, the turtle was released alive, though it was never found again.
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Exotic blossoms invite vivid color into a dusty farm field in Northern Connecticut where decorative flowers have reached maturity. Blue skies and a leaf-dense woodline embody the warmth and vitality of late summer in New England.
I’ve recently finished shooting for my Yankee Farmlands project, an endeavor which I thought would require roughly a year of work. Well, here we are now… nearly two and half years after I shot Yankee Farmlands № 1 at a hayfield in East Granby. It’s been a far longer, and far more rewarding, journey than I could’ve anticipated.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be rolling out all of the final installments of the project, picking things back up where I left off in late summer, transitioning through this past autumn and concluding with pieces I produced recently this winter. I sincerely hope that you enjoy the visual story I’ve sought to tell about Connecticut’s agricultural landscapes; it’s certainly been a pleasure to create the final chapters.
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Winter snows descend upon the farmlands of Northern Connecticut, blanketing hay wagons and a time-worn pasture shelter. Bare shade trees dot the landscape beyond, eventually giving way to the hazy silhouette of distant woodlands.
At first glance, snow-laden farms may seem rather dormant: tractors sit parked, fields lay barren and barns slumber away the winter. But historically, tireless New Englanders found ways to keep busy on the farm even during the colder months of the year.
With no fields to tend, farmers set off into their woodlots to fell trees which would eventually be used in the springtime to build and repair barns, fences and sheds. Seems like a terrible time for such strenuous outdoor labor, right? Maybe so, but there was an important advantage to this approach: it was far easier to haul heavy timber back to the farm on a sled over the snow than it would be to overload the frame and wheels of a creaky, old wooden cart in the summertime.
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In my latest release, “Fields ‘neath Talcott” (above), long shadows cast from surrounding woodlands reach across rows of corn as the sun sinks low in the sky, signaling the conclusion of a balmy, autumn day. On the horizon, Talcott Mountain rises nearly 1,000 feet from the surrounding countryside; the iconic Hublein Tower crowns the ridge crest, an unmistakable fleck against bold clouds, forest and traprock cliffs.
In 1823, Encyclopedia Britannica summed up Connecticut as “generally broken land made up of mountains, hills and valleys”. Among the rugged features of this landscape is the Metacomet Range, a distinctive chain of long, sheer ridges that weave through the Connecticut Valley.
Talcott Mountain is just one of many prominent summits of the Metacomet Range, which begins near the Connecticut coast and traces a rocky path north for 100 miles up into northern Massachusetts. Some of the more colorfully named mountains in Connecticut’s length of the chain include Sleeping Giant in Hamden and Wallingford, Meriden’s Hanging Hills and the Barndoor Hills in Granby.
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The Farmington River thunders through a dark gorge in Northern Connecticut, its swift waters boiling angrily over submerged boulders. Stark skeletons of leaf-bare trees reach skywards from the riverbank amidst dense veils of drifting fog.
This foreboding interpretation of the Farmington Valley hearkens back to early, uncertain days in the history of Simsbury. A loose confederation of Native American tribes, angered over the relentless advance of colonial settlements upon their ancestral territory, began launching attacks on the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1675. With news that entire towns were being destroyed, the people of Simsbury felt it was best to retreat from their remote frontier village until the emerging conflict subsided. They escaped eastward to Windsor and stayed for two years, a wise decision in retrospect. Upon returning after the war, it was discovered that Native forces had burnt the empty village of Simsbury to the ground.
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Frigid waters leap eagerly over the precipice of Knife Shop Falls amidst an otherwise quiescent, snow-laden forest in the Litchfield Hills.
This forgotten gorge in the sleepy, old village of Northfield was once the site of a prominent knife factory which arose in the 19th-century, its machinery driven by the falling waters of this very brook. After opening in the 1850s, the aptly-named Northfield Knife Company gained worldwide renown for its superlative cutlery in just a few decades. But in spite of this promising reputation, changing times saw the factory shuttered in the 1920s and quiet woodlands eventually reclaimed the ravine.
On an unrelated note, I produced this particular piece in mid-December last year. While it seems that we’ve mostly dodged any significant snowfall this December, I’ve no doubt that 2016 will pull a few punches right out of the gate.
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With this unseasonably warm weather, it may not feel quite like December here in New England… but things are looking beautiful nonetheless!
As I was headed out to New Preston for a shoot in the early morning a few days ago, I noticed all of the beautiful, lighted storefronts lining the town green in Litchfield. Although I didn’t have much time to spare if I was going to get to my destination before dawn, I simply had to stop and work with a few compositions. I was so pleased to review the results later in the day; the warm feel of this decorated streets certainly embodies some of the more nuanced feelings of that elusive “Christmas spirit”.
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Century-old iron girders frame the marvelously symmetrical trusses of the Old Drake Hill Bridge. The imposing metal structure stands in stark contrast to the airy clouds above and enjoys a palette of colorful blooms growing from planters and hanging flower pots.
Wooden covered bridges dominated the Connecticut landscape throughout most of the 1800s. But as the turn of the century grew closer, the reign of the wooden bridge was literally crumbling away as floods, fires and the rigors of the elements laid waste to Connecticut’s aging crossings. State-of-the-art iron bridges arose wherever old covered bridges required replacement, oftentimes sitting upon the very same abutments.
Such was the case with the iron Drake Hill Bridge in Simsbury, which was built over the Farmington River in 1892 as a direct replacement for an earlier covered bridge. Owing to its durable metal components, the Drake Hill Bridge remarkably carried traffic for 100 years, its term of service beginning with horse-drawn carriages and spanning all the way to Chevy pickups and Honda Civics. By 1992, it was finally decommissioned after a new concrete bridge was built nearby. In its retirement, the beloved Drake Hill Bridge now takes it easy, carrying only pedestrians and being adorned every year with a gorgeous array of flowers.
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Towering cumulus clouds, their exquisite contours etched into a deep blue sky, soar over the crest of Talcott Mountain in Northern Connecticut. Broad shadows cast upon the ridge top engulf the distant, century-old Hublein Tower, a monolithic structure rising high above the forest canopy.
At roughly 700 feet tall, Talcott Mountain (seen in my newly-released piece above, “Talcott Cloudscape”) climbs prominently from the forests and farmlands of the Farmington River Valley. But perhaps it is Hublein Tower, at a height of 165 feet, which lends a better sense of scale to the vast, airy spectacle of clouds overhead.
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In my latest piece, “Rings of Northgate”, foam churns away at the foot of Northgate Falls, swirling ceaselessly amidst a shallow, mossy gorge beneath woodlands in the northwest of Simsbury.
Even fairly small waterfalls such as this one, found along a nameless branch of Bissell Brook, were a boon to settlers as they migrated throughout the wilds of Connecticut in the early days. The hollow that was formed when a brook descended abruptly into gorge meant that a relatively small dam could impound plenty of water to operate a stream-side mill.
After discovering old fieldstone retaining walls lining the gorge at Northgate Falls, my curiosity was piqued. I used computer software to carefully overlay a hand-drawn map of Simsbury from 1868 upon modern satellite imagery. Sure enough, the 19th-century map shows a dammed pond labelled “Saw Mill” at the exact location of Northgate Falls; it’s likely that the mill site was already quite old even at that time.
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My newly-released piece, Hublein’s Retreat, offers a panoramic view of the autumn ridgeline on Talcott Mountain in the north of Connecticut. This image embraces a more simplistic view of nature, emphasizing two contrasting expanses of texture and color. The vivid forest canopy, grainy with millions of leaves donning their fall hues, climbs to reach the smooth, blue yonder above. Hublein Tower rises proudly from the ridge top, adding a sense of scale and helping to balance the otherwise abstract composition.
Spanning more than a dozen miles, Talcott Mountain is part and parcel to the Metacomet Range, a chain of long, narrow traprock ridges which extends from the Connecticut coast to the southern borders of Vermont and New Hampshire. Talcott Mountain can be seen from countless places throughout the towns of Bloomfield, Simsbury and Avon, its wooded slopes rising prominently above the surrounding landscape. And if there should be any doubt as to whether or not the commanding shape on the horizon is in fact Talcott, one can quickly scan the ridge line for the impressive Hublein Tower. Standing 165-feet tall upon the crest of the ridge, this beautiful tower is just as much a local landmark as the mountain itself.
My piece, Talcott’s Crown, offers some insight into the reason why Hublein Tower is such an iconic structure. In this image, I’ve captured a magnificent and rather massive white cloud as it drifted slowly over Talcott Mountain. Although this is actually a very wide, sweeping view of the ridge and the sky, we can still easily pick out the tower perched upon the mountain top, its white walls practically glowing in the afternoon sunlight. We find an even wider view of the mountain in Talcott Mountain Rustic (below), which portrays a long stretch of the ridge on the horizon behind an old tractor. Remarkably, we can still discern the towering gleaming in the distance. In an era when so many of Connecticut’s prominent ridges are topped by decidedly unattractive cell and radio towers, its refreshing to see such a beautiful and unmistakable piece of architecture gracing the crest of Talcott Mountain.
Built in 1914, Hublein Tower was originally the summer home of Gilbert Hublein and his wife, Louise. In their younger days before the turn of the century, the couple had enjoyed taking walks on Talcott Mountain and, as the story goes, Gilbert promised Louise that he would one day build her a castle there. Since the Hublein family was actually quite wealthy, Gilbert was able to make good on that fairy-tale promise. At the time of its completion, the six-story Hublein Tower was a place of superlative luxury, including a spacious living room, three bedrooms with their own fireplaces, a cigar room and, at the very top, a window-lined ballroom that offered spectacular panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. As if that wasn’t enough, guests could be shuttled to the upper floor by what is believed to be the first elevator ever installed in a Connecticut home!
Hublein Tower enjoyed quite a storied past through the 1950s, far too voluminous to describe here. However, by the 1960s, the 450-acre property came under the ownership of a corporation that intended to convert the tower into a restaurant and develop the ridge as a suburban neighborhood. Thankfully the idea was vehemently opposed and sufficient money was raised to buy out the development rights. The land was eventually dubbed “Talcott Mountain State Park” and has since expanded to encompass well over 500 acres of land with a beautifully-restored Hublein Tower at its heart.
My piece above, “Talcott Mountain Rustic”, was exhibited in the 2013 Arts & Agriculture exhibition hosted by the Granby Land Trust. You can read more by revisiting my November 2013 blog post here on From the Field.
