Groton State Forest is located in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The Northeast Kingdom covers over 2,000 square miles in Vermont’s top-right corner. The area features rolling hills, dense forests, and pristine lakes.
For its part, Groton State Forest is home to seven state parks and eight lakes and ponds. Glaciers covered the area 10,000 years ago, and their retreat created the mountainous terrain mixed with streams, ponds, bogs, and wetlands.
One of those ponds is Turtlehead Pond (also known as Marshfield Pond), featured in this photo. The remote pond is a serene 69-acre body of water popular for fishing. It offers rugged views of Burnt Mountain and the surrounding Appalachian terrain. Due to its remote location, it was only known to locals until recent years, but it has since been discovered by photographers who flood Vermont in autumn for some of the best fall foliage displays in the nation.
I was in Vermont in early October for some autumn photography with some good friends. We had checked the weather forecast for the next morning, but it looked dismal, with solid cloud cover. So, we decided to sleep in and save our energy for later. But two of us happened to wake up early and, since we were awake, decided to drive to the pond just in case.
The sky was on fire even before we reached the small pond. We immediately set up our cameras and started shooting the scene. I also took up the drone for this perspective. The foliage and sky were both at peak color, and the water was completely still, casting a mirror reflection of the sky upon its surface. These ideal conditions lasted about 15 minutes.
