Category : Jackson, NH

A White Mountain valley runs on two clocks and both have to be read. The day's clock is the valley: steep sides mean the sun clears the eastern ridge long after it has risen and drops behind the western one long before it sets, so direct light on the valley floor may last five or six hours rather than the fourteen a June table promises. The single most useful question at any venue here is when the sun leaves the site, and the answer is earlier than any published time.

What the terrain gives in exchange is a long period of open shade at either end, which is genuinely good light — soft, downward, with no hard shadows — lacking only direction, which is supplied by standing near something solid rather than in the middle of a lawn. And it gives the interval: the surrounding ridges stay in direct sun for twenty or thirty minutes after the floor has lost it, which in autumn puts a couple in soft shade with a lit, turning hillside behind them.

The year's clock is the canopy, and this is what separates the eastern mountains from the western ones. This is northern hardwood forest — maple, beech and birch rather than conifer — so the canopy is dense green in summer, spectacular for a fortnight in autumn, and completely absent all winter. A position that is deep shade in July is open and bright in November, and the same frame is three different pictures across the year. In summer that canopy is a very efficient dappling machine, which makes full shade the absolute rule: bright patches and deep shadow on the same face exceed what any sensor holds.

The region's own answers are the covered ones — verandas, porches and covered bridges, all of which are tunnels with a large soft source at each end, and none of which can dapple because the roof is solid. Autumn colour peaks at higher elevations in late September and in the valleys in the first half of October, moving downhill over a fortnight; it is the most saturated natural condition in North America, and intense reds clip the red channel before the overall exposure looks bright, so err a third of a stop darker. Winter removes the dappling entirely and turns deep snow into an enormous reflector.

The guides below take each venue on its own terms.