My Maryland

—Filmmaker Angela Ismailos

The literary critic Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was also a great memoirist whose passion for life in the unpredictable city “[opened] my heart against my better judgment.”

Of his father, an immigrant house painter from Russia, Kazin wrote: "He became a great man for walking alone…he preferred to hug his solitude in lonely city walks.”

An old man hugging his solitude…

Is there a better way to describe the experience of strolling toward, passing under, and moving beyond stands of trees whose foliage roars with changing colors?

My favorite time of year: autumn.

Nature has favored Maryland with a bounty of forests, trails, and parks in which to embrace—whether in solitude or fellowship—the great fall pageant of radiant crimson, Oriole orange, the gold of Lord Baltimore’s coat-of-arms, and shades of brown heralding the onset of winter.

It begins at the end of September west of Carroll County and ends on the Eastern Shore a week or so before All Hallows Eve. The “Autumn Glory” festival kicks off in Deep Creek Lake on October 10.

In southern Maryland, where the mooring of two ships of Catholic pilgrims at St. Clement’s Island in 1634 gives this column its name, St. Mary’s River State Park gets high marks for a spectacular woodland palette.

And, of course, there is the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which, in the Old Line State, runs for some 40 miles across South Mountain on the north end of the Blue Ridge range. This time of year—from the Potomac River north to the Pennsylvania line—it is both enchanting and exhilarating.

But, like Kazin and his old man, I am a walker in the city, and that city is Baltimore—Crabtown Eternal.

I am partial to the alleys; they afford glimpses into private lives lived in not-so-private environs, along with the odd fig tree or rosebush amidst the trashcans and broken swing sets.

But for turn-of-the-season foliage (“To everything, turn, turn, turn,” sang Roger McGuinn), Baltimore is home to magnificent urban parks.

From Leakin Park on the far west side to Patterson Park nestled among saloons and churches on the east, the trees change color according to the calendar just like they do far beyond the Beltway. Between Leakin and Patterson sprawls the 745 rolling and wooded acres of Druid Hill Park.

In Druid Hill, opened in 1860 and home to a flock of lawn-grazing sheep until the mid 1940s, is a stand of trees known as the “Grove of Remembrance.”

The grove honors soldiers who fought in the Great War and was planted on October 8, 1919, along Beechwood Drive near the zoo. A tree was planted for every state in the Union, along with one for the city of Baltimore and one for the World War I president, Woodrow Wilson.

(Wilson was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president at the Fifth Regiment Armory on West Hoffman Street in June of 1912.)

The grove of swamp white oaks—and the changing foliage to admire on foot or from the park’s bicycle path—has grown since it was first planted, but not for any good reason. With each succeeding war in which American men and women fought and died, another tree was added.

The leaves of the swamp white oak turn yellow and brown in autumn, and the grove is believed to be the oldest living memorial—time will not dim the glory of their deeds—to war dead in the United States.

More works by Rafael Alvarez can be found at his website www.alvarezfiction.com

He can be contacted via orlo.leini@gmail.com