Copyright Baltimore Sun
In the game of genetic roulette, my sisters got the gene for nature, and I got the one for urban dynamism. Each of them found renewal in landscapes, but I was energized by city views. So, 10 years ago, when I decided to sell my home in bosky Dickeyville, I was surprised to discover that wherever I lived next, my body and mind still craved the sight of green. “Move down to Mount Vernon,” a friend urged, but I demurred and bought a fifth-floor condo in Roland Park, where I enjoy seeing treetops, pillowy clouds and spectacular sunsets. Despite being a highly evolved species, we humans remain animals. However much we may think, plan, love and grieve, we can do so only within the assemblage of tissues, organs, sinew and bone that are our bodies, our mammalian bodies. And these bodies retain an atavistic need to experience nature just as they did 300,000 years ago, when modern humans developed and their lives depended on seeing, hearing and smelling what other species were up. That is why I am so grateful to the Roland Park Community Foundation for its decades-long effort to bring Hillside Park, Baltimore’s first park in 100 years, to fruition. With its $9.2 million purchase of 20 acres from the Baltimore Country Club, the foundation has given me the opportunity to ramble across a meadow and stumble over a stream. It has also secured an exquisite green space for generations of Baltimoreans to come. The process was not easy: It began a quarter of a century ago when Friends School wanted to purchase the property bordered by Falls, Edgevale and Hillside Roads — the country club would retain its hilltop clubhouse on Club Road. Then, in 2008, Keswick Multi-Care made a serious offer to buy 17.5 acres subject to a zoning change, which ultimately never materialized. Throughout those years, the foundation approached the club repeatedly, only to be rebuffed. Finally, in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, it formed a committee, led by Mary Page Michel, to raise the necessary funds. Over the course of hundreds of virtual meetings, the committee garnered support from 876 donors representing 42 Baltimore communities, 30 different Maryland neighborhoods and 28 states. In addition, they received dozens of letters of support from local schools, nonprofits and 15 nearby neighborhoods. A remarkable achievement. And one that exemplified the spirit of civic engagement and Let’s-Roll-Up-Our-Sleeves-And-Get-It-Done attitude that so impressed me when I moved to Baltimore 60 years ago. I doubt any of the children I saw at Hillside Park’s dedication on Oct. 11 appreciated the tenacity, resourcefulness and generosity creating their new park required. They were children and too busy blowing bubbles, kicking soccer balls, whirling hoola hoops and surrendering to their mammalian natures by running, running, running — and nary a one was looking at a screen. This is as it should be. This is as it was years ago when our over-worked mother would tell my sisters and me, “Go outside and play.” And we did: We built forts, we hid under bushes, we dammed streams and we fell into brooks. In short, we had fun. Now, children from all over Baltimore will be able to do the same. The Roland Park Community Foundation has raised an endowment to support the park and has hired Brandon Wilson Radcliffe, an environmental education coordinator and consulting forest project manager, who trained at the Yale School of the Environment. Radcliffe is working with teachers at Poly/Western to help them utilize the park’s resources in their classrooms. Future plans include hiking paths and playgrounds. But I’m too old to wait for future plans; I want to enjoy the park now. Five days after the dedication, I returned to the park and ambled onto a tree-encircled section known as The Dell. The late afternoon light was golden, and from across Falls Road, the breeze carried snippets of a football game at nearby Poly. The memory of all that youthful endeavor and hopefulness evinced by those Poly players touched my heart. And quickened my urban soul. With the sound of the game still in my ears, I entered a strip of trees bordering a stream. Attempting to cross it, I stumbled and hit the muddy bank in a three-point landing: one knee and both hands. And, there, near my right hand, was a stone flecked with mica. Just like the “magic rock” I once hid near my mother’s prized rose bush. I picked up the stone, examined it, and put it back in its place on the bank. Because it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to all Mother Nature’s children. Maybe someday one of them will cross that stream and find that stone just as I did, and she’ll wonder at its mica flecks before returning it to its place on the muddy bank. She’ll do all this because her mother, her Mother Nature, told her, “Go outside and play.”
