“Today, we get a chance to be absolutely still for a half-hour,” meditation leader Maria Broom says softly as she purifies the ritual homa fire offerings—dried cow dung, ghee, herbs—sending up gentle gray smoke from a copper vessel. “We’re going to go inside ourselves.”

As an older man in dreadlocks plays a flute, Broom repeats a simple mantra. Eventually, she asks the two dozen or so people seated on yoga mats inside a circle of stones at Leakin Park to think of one thing that has been bothering them lately.

“Now, as you take a deep breath in, think about that one thing that’s been on your mind,” she says, “and when you slowly exhale, let it leave your body with your breath.”

Closer to Leakin Park’s entrance, parents and kids wait their turn for a ride on miniature replica trains. A decades long tradition, it’s the biggest attraction at the park’s Second Sunday celebrations. There are also activities sponsored by the Natural History Society of Maryland and the Carrie Murray Nature Center here. But the vibe is quieter down the hill, beneath the old-growth trees.

After the 30-minute meditation session ends, most people don’t seem ready to leave, instead chatting with each other or approaching Broom, a Baltimore actress best known for her role as Marla Daniels, the ambitious, political spouse of a high-ranking police department official in The Wire.

Later, Broom sighs when asked about those who only know Leakin Park through its Wire or Serial podcast reputation—as a place where bodies get dumped. Would they be surprised if they visited in person on this sunny afternoon?

“Oh, that’s the past,” she responds with a smile. “Not on anyone’s mind today.”

Often misrepresented and chronically underfunded, the Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park area, which stretches along the West Baltimore city line, is the second-largest urban woodland park in the country. At the moment, there is a study underway to designate the more than 1,200 contiguous acres a city-state “partnership park” to empower appropriate stewardship, ranger staffing, trail maintenance, and the like.

Legislation signed by Gov. Wes Moore created an advisory committee, which has until Dec. 1 to compile a report on the viability of adding the park to the state Department of Natural Resources umbrella. Currently, Baltimore City remains the only Maryland jurisdiction without a state park.

“It becomes a destination with proper oversight and development,” says Michael CrossBarnet, executive director of Friends of Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park. “It’s touching Baltimore County. It’s within 20 minutes of where 1.5 million people live, and it could be an engine for growth in West Baltimore, the way Patterson Park has been for Southeast Baltimore.”

Historically, Leakin Park and Gwynns Falls—a 25-mile stream flowing from Reisterstown into the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River—has been underappreciated even by many in the surrounding community. But certainly not all.

“I grew up nearby, in a multi-generational household, which means it was a bit crowded,” ElaSita Carpenter says with a laugh. “Some of my earliest memories are at the park with my late father, Antonio, one of the first naturalists at the City Department of Parks and Recreation. I used to run through the fields with my brother, up the big hill at Winans Meadow, and then back through the woods.”

Her father would later design and build a Hopi labyrinth at the park, while Carpenter (pictured right, with her mother, above) went on to earn a PhD at the University of Missouri’s School of Natural Resources. (Her dissertation focused on bat activity in Baltimore, and yes, there’s quite a bit of it—six different species in Leakin Park alone.)

Not only does the labyrinth remain in great shape, so does a nearby magnolia grove that Carpenter’s father, a former Friends board member, recalled to life.

“When my husband discovered the magnolias, about 10 years ago, that was it for me, because once they bloom, it’s magical,” says Brenda Pinckney-Carpenter, sitting near the labyrinth’s entrance following the meditation session. “He rescued them from these overgrown vines; they were petering out. The following spring, however, the buds popped. If we get a warm April now, they burst and it’s the flowers that come out first, before the leaves are on the trees. In a good year, you can see them from the road, and if you step off the road for a minute, you can smell them coming up from their tiny valley. It’s intoxicating.

“Now, when I see vines growing, I go snatch them up,” she continues. “I think, ‘No, we’re not having that. We’re preserving the magnolias.’ So, it’s my job now. I’m the protector of the trees.

The city’s Trash Wheel family that already includes a Mister, Professor, and Captain will soon welcome a new member to its crew.

Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor Initiative announced this week that a fourth trash wheel—the largest of its kind—will be added to the stable—focusing on the Gwynns Falls area that spreads 60 square miles from Baltimore County to West Baltimore, and flowing into Ridgely’s Cove into the Middle Branch of the harbor. It will eventually make its way to the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay. This project is a communal one, too, as it’s the first time the city and the county are coming together to help fund a trash wheel.

“The watershed stretches across the city and county,” says Adam Lindquist, director of the Healthy Harbor Initiative. “The solution to clean up the harbor has always included both. This is going to help with the restoration of Middle Branch, which is such a unique asset.”

In a press release, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski emphasized that the Gwynns Falls flows from Reisterstown all the way to the Baltimore Harbor, adding that litter and water quality are regional issues that require this kind of partnership.

“[The new Trash Wheel] will remove trash while also calling attention to the fact that litter doesn’t stop where it drops,” he said. “So we need to prevent littering in the first place.”

With each trash wheel comes specific modifications designed to best handle the area it will be cleaning. This particular model will have a grappling arm, in essence a claw machine, to clear the large logs that often pervade the waterways in that area.

It will remove trash from the water and deposit it into a dumpster barge. And thanks to Wheelabrator Technologies, located on the property adjacent to the project, the interceptor will offload trash from the river and convert it into electricity for Maryland homes. The new wheel will also have 72 solar panels to capture sunlight that is often scarce in the area due to an overhead highway overpass.

“One nice thing about Baltimore is the three trash wheels we do have all have their own sort of unique environmental conditions,” says John Kellett, founder of Clearwater Mills, the company tasked with designing and building the wheels. TK.

There is, of course, the wonderful and unexpected cult following that the wheels have garnered throughout the city—they each have their own clever Twitter accounts—which have inspired a general sense of civic pride. Other cities are seeing what is happening in Baltimore and wanting in. Kellett says he gets calls all the time and is working on implementations in other parts of the country.

In an effort to to make ownership of this trash wheel feel truly communal, those involved are calling for name submissions for the fourth member of the “species.”

“I never dreamed the trash wheel would have sort of following it does,” Kellett says. “When I first came up with the idea, the most rewarding thing would be to see a much cleaner harbor. It turns out, just as rewarding is seeing all the people that it inspires to become part of the solution and the opportunity it presents for educating people about what they can do.”

There isn’t much variation when it comes to the type of waste that the trash wheel collects—namely, cigarette butts and all different kinds of plastic. The goal, of course, is to eradicate it all to the point where the trash wheel will no longer be needed. Lindquist sees a future in which Middle Branch is used for recreational activities like kayaking and swimming.

“Our goal to put these trash wheels on a diet,” Lindquist says. “We’re trying to reduce the amount of plastic so that we don’t need trash wheels forever.”