Another way in which Charm City lives up to its name

Last week in my poetry class, several students got to talking about "home," and where that might be, and how they felt drawn to it, wherever it was. Me, I don't have that. I don't mean that I'm homeless -- I'm not -- but that I do not consider the college town where I grew up to be "home." Part of this may be because, as a student of older-than-traditional-student age, even among many of my grad student peers, I have had the opportunity to live all over the US.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because as spring comes, and I get to live through the fecundity and rebirth that I only witnessed on exploratory weekends last year, I love Baltimore more every day. I like my house, and our quirky street. I like the tired-out old cemetery that comprises the block just south of ours, and the wildlife that flourishes there. I like the Harbor, and the Formstone, and the splendid pockets of Bawlmer hometown culture and neighborhood determination that I find all over the city. As it happens, I consider UB one of the many assets of Charm City, for reasons which I will continue to enumerate here.

But today... Today I love it here because I could get in the car with my SigOth (we are having label issues, but that is not something you need to fret about today) and drive for a couple minutes and find ourselves up at Gunpowder Falls. In half an hour we were deep into Nature, listening to birds and creeks, crisping ourselves up in the brilliant sun, admiring the lapis sky. It was excellent. I know, that's the County, not the City -- but it's still part of the Baltimore experience that coming to UB has brought me.

I have discovered that a lot of people don't know that Baltimore (City OR County) offers a surprising number of opportunities for getting your Nature on. There are parks all over the place, bike trails and urban walks throughout the city, a host of big state-run parks just to the north of the city line, not to mention the waterfront and the whole Chesapeake Bay watershed.

In both the Strategic Plan that I shared with you earlier and the recent speech made by our UB president to the State budget people, our little school has stated very clearly its desire, nay, its determination, to green the campus. I salute this. And I think it will be grand when UB is another green space in Baltimore, part of the larger secret Nature in my new hometown.