The Bridge That Frames the Seasons

Photographers return to the same covered bridge again and again, because it is never quite the same place twice. Across a Vermont year, a single span cycles through four utterly different scenes, and the people who live near it love it in every season.

In autumn it blazes, framed by the fiery leaves that draw the crowds. In winter it turns stark and beautiful, snow heaped on its roof and ice edging the river below. Spring brings rushing high water and the first tentative green, while summer settles it into deep, shady calm above a slow, swimmable current. Same bridge, four separate worlds.

That seasonal transformation is a large part of the bridges' enduring appeal, and a reminder of how completely Vermont life is governed by the turning year. Locals mark the seasons partly by how their bridge looks — the first snow on its roof, the first leaf turning beside it. To visit once is to see a single frame of a much longer film. To live nearby is to watch the whole thing, year after year, and never quite tire of it.