Baltimore: Charm City in Bloom

April is heralded in Baltimore by a flood of color. Wherever you go here in East Baltimore, the narrow streets are shrouded in magnolia, cherry, and plum blossoms; entire neighborhoods of neat brick rowhomes all but disappear behind the trees. The hilltop in Patterson Park is vivid, visible from blocks away, the pagoda wearing its spring dress of bright magnolia flowers.

The weather is gentle and mild. For a few precious weeks, we become oblivious to the morning weather report; Jane and I walk here and there in the city, wearing any old pair of shirt and shorts like we once did in California. We walk to the harbor and climb the steps up Federal Hill. We sit beside the marina in Fells Point and watch the dog-walkers go by. My parents visit with Evelyn, and after touring Homewood, we show them around the medical campus, the cherry trees blooming in front of the Dome. 

In the springtime, all of your neighbors move with great purpose - a smile in their step and the energy of the new season upon them. But watch them long enough, and you will see them stop in their tracks, suddenly and admiringly, unable to ignore the spectacle of the city around them. It is truly a charming thing.

Gettysburg: Hallowed Field

These photos were taken during a January weekend trip that has no coherent theme, inasmuch as it included two sites of Civil War history, a chocolate factory, and a wolf sanctuary. We left Baltimore early on Saturday morning, driving west for over an hour on I-70W to the tripartite border of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia; we spent most of the morning there, hiking around the fort at Maryland Heights and taking in the views above and across from Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, a sight which Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1783), described as meriting the entire voyage across the Atlantic.

From there we drove north along the U.S. 15, and after a pit stop in Thurmont, we reached Gettysburg in mid-afternoon. By this point, the winter sun was beginning to hang low over the fields as we walked down the line of monuments and patina-grazed cannons. We looked out over the High Water Mark of the Confederacy, an expanse now incongruously dotted with haystacks, lone trees, and the occasional farmhouse. Beyond the open field lay the treeline from which Pickett and his regiments charged in a vain attempt to break the Union line. From the low stone wall where we stood, it could have hardly seemed any closer.

We spent the night at an inn in Harrisburg, complete with a Texas Roadhouse steak dinner; it was the sort of meal that perfectly encapsulates the experience of the American road trip - the ennui that always pervades a sit-down supper on a chilly night in a strange, lonely town. There is a loss of gravity in that restaurant booth; you feel a great sense of displacement, and you wonder how you got here, what folks are doing back home, and whether you could live here forever. You wonder why you ordered fried pickles. Back at the inn, it is not obvious from the parking lot, the lobby, or any of the hotel premises whether any guests are staying there aside from us. A cold January night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We check the pool, the gym room, and business center. Finding them deserted, we go to sleep.

The next morning as we check out over continental breakfast, the television warns of "wintry mix", frozen bridges and roadways. After making our own bars at the Hershey's chocolate factory, we are heading into the woods to visit the Pennsylvania Wolf Sanctuary. Jane is driving.

At the Sanctuary, in a (truly) wintry downpour that tests the weatherproofing on our outerwear for the upcoming Iceland trip, we meet with wolves who were raised illegally, forsaken, and relinquished to this refuge in Lititz, PA. Even in the rain and sleet, they are inquisitive about their new visitors; their eyes betray their frightening intelligence and cunning - with the exception of Friday, a young male wolf with a completely black coat, whose golden eyes are ever so earnest ("He's so earnest. So earnest," I keep telling Jane). Friday now sits on our fridge, one souvenir magnet among many.

After our tour, with the sky still pouring, we make our way south to Lancaster and somehow find a perfectly delicious bowl of pho at Rice & Noodles, in perfectly suitable weather. Our bellies full, we scrap our plans for the afternoon, and retreat to Baltimore in the winter rain.

Baltimore: The Holidays

Christmastime in Baltimore. The trees are completely barren. The air grows nippy, and if you stay awake long into the night, you'll sometimes catch a few snowflakes falling outside your window, but they are gone long before the morning comes. From Thanksgiving onward it is constantly Black Friday, and wherever you walk downtown, the streets are lined with holiday shoppers warmly dressed in peacoats and scarves. The days are short, so that on the weekends, you have no excuse not to sleep in, and when you step out the door for your dinner date, the street lamps are already flickering.

On the west side of the Harbor, a circle of red and white booths festooned with lights appears mysteriously overnight. Holding hands with your date, you walk from the other side of town to investigate, finding a veritable village of crepes and pretzels, ales and ciders, squeaky cheeses-on-sticks. At Baltimore's annual German Christmas Market, you run your hands through alpaca wool sweaters from Peru and gaze at glass displays full of dolls and delicate ornaments. Under the main tent, the harpist plays holiday tunes for an enchanted crowd. There is a booth that sells every variety of chocolate-covered nut.

This year, it is my turn to stay home and tend to the cats while Jane returns to California. Before she leaves, we reach into the highest kitchen cupboard and unfurl four strings of holiday lights, one for each of our windowsills. The cats watch as we decorate; Honeydew mindlessly enraptured, Charlotte assessing each LED bulb for threat and nutrition potential.  After Jane leaves, the three of us stay up late into the night. I read by lamplight, while the cats diligently wait for me to grow tired.

With Jane out of town, every day is a day for exploration. I sleep in late and eat lunch for breakfast. In the afternoon on Christmas Day, I drive out to Soldier's Delight (35 minutes northwest) and walk the serpentine trail. Not 10 minutes from the car, I am trodding on ancient seafloor through a barren prairie. I have been transported from Baltimore to Nebraska and backwards in geologic time. The sun cruises along a low, elliptical path across the western sky, producing the golden, honey light so beloved by photographers in the winter. I work among the tall reeds of grass.

Jane is not here, and I have no one to entertain beside myself, nothing to worry about aside from my imagination. I can point to a spot on the map and go. On my way back from the prairieland, I take the car on a detour along Deer Park Road. There is a reservoir here - Liberty - which was created in the 1950s by damming a northern branch of the Patapsco River. The mill towns in the valley are now underwater, its tenants long disappeared. Now it is a lake for fishermen, boaters, and sunset photographers like me. An entire region altered, acres flooded, communities uprooted. Multi-purpose recreation. I turn off at what I wrongly believe to be the trailhead to Piney Point. Forgivingly, the path through the woods quickly leads me to the shore. There are no other cars parked aside from mine, but the track through the thorny bramble is well-trodden, and a tiny spit of land that juts barely fifty yards into the lake is home to numerous beer bottle fragments. I find a spot clear of broken glass, and I sit beside the lake. The water is completely flat and smooth like a mirror, the trees still and somber. On the distant shore there is a small splash and a flurry of motion - two white-tailed deer, having spotted me, disappear together into the woods. In a cove far, far away, a portable radio is playing country music; I can hear it drifting toward me around one bend of the lake, another, and another.

This is Christmas in Baltimore. The sun slowly disappears behind the trees, and the light fades as I make my way back to the car. Traffic along the beltway is minimal as I head home, and when I turn into the driveway, the lights in the window are already aglow.