Haddam, Connecticut 06438
Haddam, not to be confused with somewhat popular East Haddam, is a town that most people pass through on their way to somewhere else. It's a tame, reliable sort of place, and gosh darn it, that's good enough for me. Haddam has three "villages": Higganum, Tylerville/Shailerville, and Haddam Neck (which, through a twist of zoning fate, is actually across the river, between East Haddam and Middle Haddam). Here's a map of the area.
The prominent natural features in Haddam are woods and river. Gentle hills with exposed ridges and little streams descend towards the Connecticut river. Cockaponset State Forest accounts for over a quarter of the town's land.
Some pictures from around town:
Haddam is mentioned in "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and also "The River of Rivers in Connecticut," both poems by modernist poet Wallace Stevens. Stevens was a poet of ideas; his style was intellectual (some would say elitist), rather than romantic. He was interested in the function of imagination as a means of interrogating and ordering reality. I find it interesting that such a cerebral poet frequently mentions physical locations, like Haddam, in his poems. It feels as if he uses these locations to project his ideas onto the landscape (see "Anecdote of the Jar").