Baltimore: Light City

Date night.

After a post-night shift nap, Jane and I grab a cab to the harbor.  We have dinner at The Rusty Scupper, where one pays a premium for the waterfront view moreso than the food (though the food is not bad either). We share a big plate of fried calamari, grilled sea bass, and giant crab cakes. The waiters, perhaps mistaking us for high school sweethearts out on a first date, take us up to the second floor balcony to have our picture taken with Baltimore's downtown skyline across the water.  It is a bit reminiscent of an August day in Boston, when we ate broiled seafood platters at No Name Restaurant, had our picture taken at the register, and spent the rest of the day walking along the marina, going to the movies, and visiting the aquarium. That was eight years ago. In the interim, I've discovered an unexpected benefit of long distance, which is that eighty-hour workweeks and professional responsibilities notwithstanding, you feel, more often than not, that you have all the time in the world to be together.

After dinner, we walk along the water in front of Rash Field, circling around the harbor back toward our home on Washington Hill.  In the waterfront park, a ferris wheel has been set up, and booths are selling cotton candy, slushies, and popcorn. A brass band is performing in the pavilion beside the beach volleyball courts. Passing the Maryland Science Center, we reach the first exhibits of the Light and Art Walk, a 3-mile-long chain of sculptures, displays, and interactive art pieces arranged along the Inner Harbor as part of Baltimore's annual Light City festival.  As the sun sets, children are bouncing up and down on strobe-lit seesaws along the harbor's west shore. At The Pool, a grid of multi-colored LED stepping stones, I join the other kids and adults alike hopping from circle to circle, mesmerized by the lights bursting under my feet. Jane stands to the side and watches her grown man-child, bemused.

Further along the waterfront, we put on VR goggles and watch the Baltimore Visitor Center transform into a fantasyscape of floating islands and dinosaurs. We wander into food tents with vendors selling wine, ramen, and chocolate-covered berries. As the skies darken, the promenade lights flicker on, shining the way up Charles Street towards the Monument in Mt. Vernon. On the corner of Pratt Street, a band is jamming with the crowd in front of the main soundstage. We turn the corner and hop aboard the deck of the Civil War-era sloop, the Pride of Baltimore II, whose mast and riggings have been festooned with LED lights. As night falls, the crowd thickens into a flowing mass of humanity. Sightseers, city slickers, and out-of-towners alike come dressed in their best glow-in-the-dark headpieces, bangles, and Orioles tees; the Inner Harbor is alive with celebration. 

Out on the jetty, I set up my tripod and take long exposures at the scene across the water. The harbor is lined with yachts sailing through the glassy waters and tall ships anchored from around the world. The ferris wheel is now a glowing rim under the lanterns of Federal Hill, and blue-green searchlights around the city rove through the night sky. We stare befuddled at OVO, a massive, lattice-metal egg planted in a reflecting pool at the water's edge, as it cycles through a rainbow of colors and emits bursts of water vapor mist. "Pineapple!" cries Jane as it morphs from green to gold.  As I click away with exposure after exposure, the crowd filing through the egg becomes a mass of amorphous ghosts, silhouetted against the colors and the lights.

Past the National Aquarium, we walk across the suspension foot bridge to the next pier, which has been transformed into OUR HOUSE, an overhead web of neon and floodlights that pound to an electric soundtrack. We follow the pier past display after display of light and music; the neighboring restaurants and hotels are in on the act, their balconies and rooftops decorated and glowing. At the end of our walk, we reach my favorite display of the night, Drift, a series of rowboats sailing down the canal at the edge of the harbor, each carrying a radiating tower of multi-colored umbrellas. There is something strangely calming, something all-too-magical, about watching the boats move across the water, their glowing cargo carving its way through the night's darkness.  We turn up the canal and walk the streets back toward home, with the heart of the city alive and bright around us.

Antietam: Through the Valley

Jane and I are married.

Well, not completely, yet. Our ceremony is toward the end of May in California, where we'll be sealing the deal by celebrating with family and friends. But as of this Thursday, the license is signed and the deed is done. It doesn't feel any different than before, I suppose.

On a crisp March morning, we pack our bags and leave town for a overnight jaunt to the river valleys of western Maryland. On our way, we stop at the old stone courthouse on the hill overlooking the historic mill-town of Ellicott City. We accidentally pass through the metal detectors for the criminal court before a security guard ushers us to a small side chapel. Fifteen minutes later, we drop our documents in the car and walk down the hill to the riverbank, where we eat breakfast in a small café. Jane orders a café au lait, and I have a London Fog. We split a smoked salmon bagel and a BLT. The first meal of our marriage, I say to Jane with a nudge. She shrugs, chewing contentedly on her bagel. There is an air of finality about it that dissipates with the sunshine and the morning fog.

We are outbound on the I-70, heading westward past Frederick, and then shooting for the gap in the mountains towards Harpers Ferry and the border of West Virginia. On the highway, we leave the coastal floodplains and woodlands behind, climbing past the fall line and into the rolling hills and river valleys of the Piedmont. Jane points out the window at the idyllic landscape floating by. "Donkey." "That's clearly a horse," I tell her. "Donkey," she repeats, nonplussed. I briefly recall that I am now married to this woman.

Just outside of Harpers Ferry, we turn north and follow a small road through the hills above the Potomac River Valley, winding along the corrugated folds of the Blue Ridge.  As we near our destination, we turn onto a private road, past a gate, and up a lane through a copse of pine trees, where I park the car beside a wooden lodge on a hilltop.  Before us is a gorgeous westward panorama, down the valley to the town of Sharpsburg and the fields surrounding Antietam Creek, and from there to the Upper Potomac and the cliffs that mark the edge of Maryland. After unloading our bags from the car, we get acquainted with our home for the next day and night - the Antietam Overlook Farm.

The Antietam Overlook Farm is a charming little bed-and-breakfast lodge with several rooms, a kitchen and dining area, and a living room with full bookshelves, a gramophone, and a roaring fireplace. We are introduced to Amadeo, the African grey parrot who lives downstairs by the window looking into the front yard, spending his days climbing around the top of his birdcage and chatting with guests. We go upstairs and find our room, an impressive suite with a fireplace, a second-level balcony facing westward, a deep, wood-paneled bathtub, and a set of binoculars for bird-watching. Jane settles in for a late-morning nap while I sit downstairs with a book and a cup of hot chocolate.  Amadeo hustles around the side of his cage to get a better look at me. "What'cha doing?" the bird asks me. "I'm reading," I say. "Fucker," says the bird. "Shit. Shit."

After Jane gets her beauty rest, we set out on a short drive down the mountain to the town of Sharpsburg, where we will be touring the fields surrounding Antietam Creek, which saw the bloodiest day of fighting in American military history. We spend the afternoon driving through the battlefield, pausing to gaze at monuments commemorating the deaths of entire towns' worth of young men in the span of minutes. Jane narrates from the visitor center guide as I drive. We pause to stare at the headstones in the Mumma Farm cemetery, take a walk down Bloody Lane, and climb the observation tower gazing over the main battlefield, a barren farmland now dotted with lone oak trees and crisscrossed by tall grass. We take a stroll to the Burnside Bridge crossing Antietam Creek before returning to town. At Nutter's Ice Cream, a post-Antietam tradition (for tourists, not infantrymen),  Jane gets a cone with a massive scoop of cookie dough, and I devour a split scoop of fresh strawberry and peach ice cream.

We continue west, crossing a road bridge suspended high over the Potomac and entering Shepherdstown, West Virginia. On the main street of this little college town, Jane and I browse stores selling homemade crafts and used books. I pick up a copy of Marina Keegan's The Opposite of Loneliness from a back bookshelf. Somewhere in the distance, bells are pealing from a church tower, and students are rushing home from class on a golden Thursday afternoon. Jane and I sit down for dinner at the French bistro next door, and over scallops and steak, we reminisce about old times.

After dinner, we retreat from West Virginia with the sunset to our backs. Returning through Sharpsburg and past a battlefield aglow in dusk, we turn up the mountainside toward the Overlook Farm. I stop the car just below the hilltop to take a picture of the neighboring farmhouse at sunset (above). Back at the lodge, we are acquainted with Mr. Meowser, the farmyard cat who spends his days hunting vermin around the property. He climbs the fire escape up to our balcony, and after sitting in Jane's lap for a few minutes, spends the rest of the night gazing wistfully at us from outside our windowsill.  To our west, the sun drops lower toward the horizon, bathing the land in lovely amber hues. I set up the tripod to shoot into the sunset, using a new technique I recently learned to reduce lens flare (above).

That night, Jane and I sit downstairs by the fireplace, Jane working on a grant for her labwork while I read. Amadeo clucks and whistles at us, but for the most part holds his profanity. We share a glass of white wine (which we promptly ditch for tea and hot cocoa), and I nearly burn the lodge down with a bag of microwave popcorn. We go to bed early, with the embers from a wood fire smoldering on the back lawn outside. Early the next morning, I leave Jane asleep while I throw on my walking clothes, grab my camera gear, and drive fifteen minutes south through the pitch dark to the bank of the Potomac River across from Harpers Ferry. Repeating a hike that Jane and I did together over 2 years ago now, I make the arduous climb through the trees up to Maryland Heights, a stony ridge overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. At of the end of my walk, gasping for breath, I set my tripod down on the cliff edge and take pictures of the lovely scene below, coated in the dark blue of early dawn. To my left, a pink sun rises in the direction of the ocean. The combined waters below me flow toward it, carving a mighty valley through earth and rock.

As I descend the mountain and return to the car, rain begins to fall.  White-tailed deer scatter to the side of road as I leave the riverbank and wind back through the wet hills towards home. Back at the Overlook Farm, I dash inside as the rain comes down in earnest. Jane is just waking; we go downstairs and enjoy a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, homemade pancakes, and poached pears. At the dining table, we meet a few fellow guests, including an elderly couple visiting from Baltimore between dialysis sessions. We talk about politics, health care, and a few of the doctors we mutually know at the Hopkins Bayview campus. They part with a few suggestions for other bed-and-breakfasts Jane and I should visit in the Chesapeake region (Smith Island, etc.). "We used to live in California," the wife tells me. "That was over forty years ago. We didn't think we'd stay out here, but we just couldn't leave the seasons behind."

We drive home in the rain, returning to Baltimore after lunch in Ellicott City.

Loch Raven: Winter Light

Valentine's Day finds me with a rare, mid-week break. I drive up north to Loch Raven, park the car off Dulaney Valley Road, and explore Dead Man's Cove, a corner of the lake where I have never been. Turning off the path and through the trees, I walk down to the water's edge. To my north, cars bound for the city are flying by on the road bridge from the Jarrettsville Pike, their headlights like distant pairs of glow-bugs in the dark. The sun begins to creep over the trees, bathing the shoreline in a radiant pink. On my patch of dry moss, with my feet dangling over the water, I take a few shots of dawn over the lake, but am mostly content to sit and watch. On my way out of the woods, biding my time to miss the morning rush hour,  I stop in Towson to read for awhile and do groceries at Trader Joe's. Valentine's dinner that night: rack of lamb provençale with roast vegetables and salt potatoes.