“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.

Street Wise

July 11, 2014
North Avenue

Lieutenant Colonel Melvin Russell, the setting sun catching the gold trim of his police hat, is addressing several hundred men at the edge of Leakin Park on a warm Friday night. “This city belongs to all of us,” Russell implores the crowd, preparing for a 9.5-mile anti-violence march from one end of often-notorious North Avenue to the other—and back. “It’s your presence, your being out here, that’s going to turn this city around. You can’t be afraid of the kids that you used to give freeze pops and bags of chips to.”

As sirens and dirt-bike riders known as “12 O’clock Boys” fly past, organizer Munir Bahar, who launched the initial 300 Men March last summer after a string of shootings, adds that change requires time and attention: “Like a slow-cooked meal.”

Then, the men, nearly all African-American, most wearing black “300 Men March” T-shirts with “Baltimore’s Anti-Violence Movement” emblazoned in block white lettering across the back, begin their journey. Onlookers shout and cars honk encouragement as the march’s female supporters hand out water bottles every few miles.

“It gets real when you come back up under I-83 and see that hill, knowing there’s two miles to go,” laughs Ian Smith, his shaved head already glistening. Smith is also keeping tabs on Divine Jones, a Fort Worthington Elementary fifth-grader. “Even when his older brother backed out, he told me he still wanted to do it,” says Anita Harris, his mother, waiting at the Baltimore Cemetery, the halfway point. “We’ve lost a lot of friends and family to violence.”

“He took my walking stick and he was off,” Smith says.

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Bird Food

July 13, 2014
Remington Avenue

“Roll lightly. You don’t want to be smashing it into the table,” Charm City Cakes designer Mary Smith cautions her Sunday morning class who are learning the fundamentals of fondant application while competing for tickets and batting practice field passes for tonight’s nationally televised Yankees-Orioles game at Camden Yards.

Meanwhile, soon-to-be-married Orioles season ticketholders Stephen Smeal and Sherry Green are building their masterpieces side by side. He’s playing off the O’s “Birdland Passport” image, which features the Oriole bird holding a bat in each clawed foot, while her more traditional white cake is themed around the Orioles’ 60th anniversary season. Last year, the couple even planned their vacation around the team’s West Coast swing, catching several games in California. “If we win tickets,” says Smeal, “it’ll be our fourth game this week.” (They did; Green’s cake took second place.)

The proceeds from the workshop/cake competition benefit the YAI (Young Adult Initiative) Network, whose fundraising captain, Connie Schwab, has convinced her boyfriend, coincidentally Yankees beat writer Bryan Hoch—now delicately drawing the Yankees’ logo in icing—to take part. Later, using an X-Acto knife, he cuts out a silhouette of the New York skyline and rings the cake in (slightly crooked) navy blue pinstripes. “It’s good,” he says, of his rookie effort.

“Well, it’s your first time, honey,” offers his girlfriend, more objectively.

Afterward, someone suggests he present the cake to outgoing Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter as a retirement gift. “Hey, I haven’t gotten him anything, and I am flying to Minneapolis after this for the All-Star Game,” Hoch says. “I’ll see him there.”

“That’s an idea,” Schwab nods and smiles. “That way it won’t have to come back to New York with me.”

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Big Dreams

July 18, 2014
Annapolis

Inside a 210-square-foot, off-the-grid home being built behind The Key School’s administration office, Cameron Salvon-Harman, a rising Key School ninth-grader, pulls a nail from his pouch and drives it into a piece of three-quarter-inch plywood, aiming for the stud. “Crap, I missed,” he says, wiping his brow. Elsewhere on the modest construction site, a dozen middle-school campers in hard hats and safety goggles, are toting lumber, sawing wood, and building bookcases.

The first “Tiny House” built by Maryland students—according to The Key School and SustainaFest, a two-year-old, Annapolis-based sustainability and education nonprofit—the project is designed to teach students about sustainability principles. In the process, SustainaFest president George Chmael II adds, they’re also learning about green design and technology, including solar electricity and rainwater filtration. Each camp day begins with a talk from a local green expert and, ultimately, the home will become a traveling exhibit. Already, Chmael II says, the project has received a great deal of interest, including a call from Good Morning America.

“It’s a little smaller than my bedroom, but I think I could live in a house like that,” says Salvon-Harman. “I’d put it on a barge, make it into a houseboat, and sail it and live on the water for a while. Then I’d hitch it to a trailer and drive across the country—just go anywhere.”