Forest Avenue Bridge: 2025
There’s a white mark — possibly the residual adhesive from an old sticker — atop the metal rail of the Forest Avenue Bridge. It’s dead center on the downriver side, just above what looks like some kind of environmental tracker or river camera. That white mark is where I take this photo from.
I live just a few blocks from the Huron River and cross the bridge daily, on foot or in my car, sometimes by bike. I wasn’t consciously trying to create a photo series — I’m just drawn to this view. The year I moved here, there was a silver bicycle frame in the shallow water just below the bridge. During a drought this past summer, the water level got so low that someone built a stone firepit and benches further down along the riverbed. Sometimes I see anglers casting for bass and pike in the channel. I notice when there are downed branches or new gaps in the banks. I watch its rate of flow and see all manner of light reflected off the water’s surface.
I like how bucolic it makes Ypsilanti look. The surrounding urban life is naturally cropped to give some indication of what this scene might have looked like hundreds of years ago. In reality, Frog Island Park lays just to the left, with its community garden, quarter-mile cinder track, and concrete amphitheater. In some of the more barren winter photos you can just make out the graffitied cement wall behind the canoe portage. Dead ahead, obscured by trees and the curvature of the river, is the intersection of North Huron and West Cross streets. To the right is a vocational rehabilitation center for victims of spinal cord and brain injuries who, in cold months, hang hand-knitted mittens and hats on the branches of a tree out front for others in need. To the rear, across Forest Avenue, a raiload bridge bisects the river at a southeastern angle, so that its road-crossing occurs just past the main bridge at the border of Depot Town.
The ten photos below were all taken from the “white mark” at different points throughout the year. Interestingly, all are from late afternoon or evening. I must have some A.M. photos of the river, but none from 2025.
L–R: January 10, 6:16 PM | April 4, 6:33 PM | June 1, 8:38 PM | July 14, 8:34 PM | September 19, 7:51 PM | October 27, 6:51 PM | November 19, 3:48 PM | December 3, 2:00 PM | December 15, 5:15 PM | December 17, 3:55 PM