June 13, 2007
Baltimore's troll colony: The story behind the story
Barbara Saffir's story on the Gwynns Falls Trail, and its photo of the Carrollton Viaduct.
My friend Barbara Saffir came to Baltimore three or four times to report and photograph a story on the Gwynns Falls Trail. She wrote a very interesting Road Trip for the Washington Post, A Trail Full of Charm in Baltimore, May 20.
It was a blast getting to find a secret pocket of peaceful, green Baltimore over the winter and spring when I was invited to accompany Barbara on several of her trips.
One interesting facet of wandering the trail, formerly famous for running through Leakin Park, where Baltimore's murderers dumped their dead until the installation of pillars to keep vehicles off the trail, was its revelation of more than one hidden human world along the trail.
Take a look at Barbara's photo of the Carrollton Viaduct in the original story, above. It took two trips for us to find this pretty vista, one that reminded me of the Pont du Gard, the famous Roman aqueduct standing in Southern France, although of course the latter is far more spectacular.
In classic Baltimore fashion, the viaduct is tagged with 6-foot-high graffiti and the trees along the banks of the Gwynns Falls are festooned with shredded plastic trash bags. Neither of these can fully detract from its green beauty.
As Barbara photographed the viaduct, a group of boys appeared high above us, crossing the viaduct, heedless of the fact a train could come any minute. She finished shooting and, feeling a bit like potential prey, we zoomed away to a busier area of the trail.
We noticed other somewhat strange goings-on. As we strolled along an area not far from the Carroll Park Golf Course, a hillbilly couple emerged from shrubbery along the stream. He was tall, muscular, with a ball cap and tattoes on his bare tanned arms, she was small, blond and skinny. They wouldn't meet our eyes, and went to his red pickup in the golf course parking lot. Open-air sex? An affair? Shooting up? Who knows?
The couple were part of a stream of hillbillies using the railroad tracks -- not the trail, mind you -- as a thoroughfare between parts of SoWeBo (southwest Baltimore). They streamed along a ground-level, north-south part of tracks and climbed up also on the east-west, elevated viaduct running at a right angle.
I could never make it across the viaduct with my fear of heights, but SoWeBomorons sauntered along its unguarded edge without concern.
Barbara and I poked along an unofficial leg of the trail that continues under I-95. She seemed a little nervous during much of the trip that we would be jumped by youths.
Still, she was curious as to why park officials said that due to rights conflicts around I-95, they had to move the labeled Gwynns Falls Trail onto busy streets near the Ravens stadium, yet unofficially, we could see that a spur of the trail continued its sylvan way beside the Falls.
I was thinking about how much this trail under a highway reminded me of my commute beside the Campbell Creek Trail, and under part of the busy Seward Highway, when I worked in 2004 in Anchorage. While I was musing about Alaska, Barbara hollered for me to turn back.
She had noticed sleeping bags, personal belongings and more graffiti indicating human occupation on a broad ledge above the trail. It seems that a community of Baltimore's homeless lives under this stretch of I-95. We got confirmation of this when we continued to Patapsco Valley Sales for some buying of planters at wholesale prices. A member of the staff said that near their shop -- which is probably 1.5 miles away from the golf course -- they see homeless people emerging from under the expressway to go about their daily wanderings.
Do we have an entire, colony of semi-subterranean gnomes, trolls and hobbits under several miles of I-95 in Baltimore?
Cue "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers:
Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge downtown
I could not get enough
Under the bridge downtown
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge downtown
I gave my life away.
I sense a book or at least a news article here somewhere.
- posted by jbelliveau at 8:31 AM in The Neighborhood
