Will Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park Become Baltimore City’s First State Park?

“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.