From “open for business” to “sleeping on the dock,” Mohonk Mountain House’s boats present lovely repeating patterns.
Mohonk Boats, Day and Night
Tag: summer
Summer Job
As summer jobs go, lifeguarding on Lake Mohonk seems like a pretty good one.
Dry Amidst Lush at Julien’s Farm Store Garden
Amidst the overgrown, riotous, lush, nourishing garden of Julien’s Farm Store (perhaps the best breakfast in northern Connecticut), this trellis-like arrangement of sticks supporting an array of growing vines stands out for its profound lack of photosynthetic light absorbers.
Bushnell Tower with a Great Sky
A Romantic sunset sky with lots of highly textured clouds makes a perfect companion for the rough but linear concrete forms of I.M. Pei’s Bushnell Tower.
Light Academia
If “Dark Academia” has become a fairly well-worn genre with familiar tropes, I can’t say I’d mind finding a more optimistic and friendly version—less secret knowledge driving cults towards madness, more dragging indoor furniture into the sunshine to produce a comfy afternoon study spot.
Mohonk Swimming and Boating
Boaters can’t swim across the lake (without checking with a guard first) and boaters can’t enter the swimming area, but they interact across a thin membrane of ropes and floats. Look at that log, moored perpendicular to the floating platform on the right; it splits the difference between the boat/swim categories.
Hotel Floating in the Sky
Glaciers carved deep between stones to create the lake on which Mohonk Mountain House appears to float, but I feel like those glaciers left behind a little bit of their cold blue thermodynamic impact in the colors (and temperature) of the water.
Hartford is Where the Rainbow Ends
Though the laws of optics may prevent me from ever reaching the literal end of a rainbow, this double (nearly triple) rainbow over Hartford certainly captures the emotional content of my central-Connecticut experiences.
Connecticut Capitol, Miyazaki Mode
Warm sunshine, perfectly cloud-decorated skies, and green late-summer colors from bright sunlight make the Connecticut State Capitol look like a still from a Miyazaki movie. The architecture doesn’t hurt the comparison, either.
The Empty (But Clean) Pond in Bushnell Park
The benefit of living in a beautiful place is finding those days when (i) a beautiful location and (ii) charming lighting and (iii) special circumstances align. On a perfect late-summer afternoon, the pond in Bushnell Park is just finished its cleaning and repairs and has had its bottom protected with a layer of large stones. This is sort of a once-in-a-few-decade chance to capture the odd site of the dry pond.
Great Falls Reservoir
Great Falls with additional great falls grafted on via dam.
Sunset Light on Bushnell Tower
A great sunset over Bushnell Park is well-matched by reflections from the windows of Bushnell Tower.
Raether Library
Renovations in the early 2000s greatly enlarged (and renamed) Trinity College’s library; this monolithic-yet-warm form feels welcoming amidst the Hartford landscape.
Clement, Raether, and the Hartford Skyline
The warm sodium glow of Trinity College’s campus by night—Clement Chemistry Building and Raether Library in the foreground, the chapel and the Hartford skyline in the background—highlights (in a literal, X-marks-the-spot manner) the contrast between being a student and a faculty member here. Though the same institution, the same general campus, I spend my time now in completely different places than I once did. A prime example is the X-marked courtyard between the two buildings—a place I walked through perhaps 10 times total as a student, but where I now pause for coffee with my colleagues nearly every morning.
Giant Valley Polo Club
At Connecticut’s oldest still-active polo grounds, two cozy teams of amateur polo players clashed on what was once a hay field. With the old barn in the background, the image almost feels like it could be happening at any moment in the past hundred years.
Decaseconds 