Lake Roland- the Lake Endures
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By ANNE BENNETT SWINGLE ...AM The Lahr [Wires Lake Roland has wildlife, woods, and clear water—just twelve minutes from downtown. Millionaires and bird-watchers live along its shores. Floods, development, silt, and now a light rail line have threatened the lake's peace. How long will people let this urban wilderness last? ANT SOME EGGS, ADELAIDE?" services; all Lord had to do was escort Sarah Fenno Lord calls out from them across the park. She made an occa- W her back porch. Adelaide Racke- sion out of it, inviting friends and neigh- mann is just leaving after a short visit, bors and piles of children to come along. crossing the wide, sweet-smelling back- Now it's become a biannual event, this yard to her house next door. You can hear sheep walk. Everyone gets a balloon, the chickens squawking in the barn out back. sheep are summoned, and Lord, a theater Lord and Rackemann live on small critic for the Daily Record, her husband, farms less than a mile from the city line in Henry, and their 4-year-old daughter, Bare Hills, a bucolic enclave north of Hannah, bring out their shepherd's crook Mount Washington. Their homes border and embark on a real-life nursery rhyme, on Robert E. Lee Park, five hundred a two-mile "welcome-to-spring" hike acres of relatively unspoiled wilderness through the park. that includes Lake Roland. The area On one such day, Evelyn Zink hap- where Lord and Rackemann live has been pened to be out strolling in the park with called the Left Bank, and not just because her dog. Zink lives on the other side of it is on the west side of the lake. It's al- Lake Roland, on the populous, affluent, ways had more than its share of free- and highly civilized Right Bank. The peo- thinkers and seems to foster a more Bohe- ple here don't necessarily live close to the mian life-style than Ruxton or Wood- land. Close to the club maybe (the masses brook on the Right Bank. Most Left are about equally divided between the Bankers are devoted to nature and live L'Hirondelle Club and the Elkridge), or somewhat close to the land. close to Graul's, but not close to the land. Take Sarah Lord. Through the years, So there was Zink walking through the she has kept chickens, turkeys, pigs, and park when suddenly Sarah Lord appeared sheep. Her hens used to keep the lawyers on a wooded knoll, crook in hand, lead- at Piper and Marbury supplied with eggs. ing her flock. It was a confused moment: (Her husband, who is a partner with the the astonished Zink reining in her dog (an firm, obligingly would cart them in to work with him). Right, On skates or on sleds, Sarah Fen- As for the sheep—once, when Sarah's no Lord, her daughter Hannah, and house was being worked on, she had to next-door-neighbor Adelaide Racke- farm them out. A friend who lived across mann venture onto frozen Lake Roland the lake volunteered her sheep-sitting on a winter afternoon. 38 BALTIMORE MAGAZINE CRAIG DANIELS English sheep dog, no less, straining in ness will be lost forever. At 66, Adelaide is remarkably trim unparalleled delight on its leash)—an in- "I've been around too many cities, and and—as would soon be revealed—fit. On tersection in time and place when city I don't know any city that has an area like our walk in the woods, she keeps a sharp mouse met country mouse, when Ralph Robert E. Lee Park," says Edward Dav- eye out. There's hardly a sight that Lauren met L.L. Bean, when Right Bank ens , a retired physician who has lived doesn't have a certain meaning, a certain met Left Bank. near the lake for forty-five years. "But history for her: the box elders and poplars the area is terribly threatened. The park near the water where she's been seeing a will be cut in half by a train, running yellow-billed cuckoo, the place where AKE ROLAND IS PART OF THE FIVE- through every seven minutes. This will she came upon a big white standard poo- hundred-acre Robert E. Lee Park, an not just disturb it, but it will destroy the dle lost in the woods several months ago. Labundant wilderness only twelve wildlife and the quiet. " Nondescript clearings along a wooded minutes by 1-83 from downtown Balti- Most of the people around Lake Ro- path are as identifiable to Adelaide as the more. With its forest, wetlands, and open intersection of two city streets would be water, the park is a refuge for wildlife to most people. In her matter-of-fact amid a major metropolitan area. "The Sierra Club will way, she points out a big-leaf magnolia, Not only is the area around Robert E. viburnum shrubs, a euonymus elatus with Lee Parka unique natural ecosystem, it is be here, Green Peace its red berries and intriguing, stiff wings. a social ecosystem as well—with Lake will drop in . If (As a writer of horticultural articles, and Roland bringing together people from all wife of the former gardening editor at The around its shores with shared concerns Lake Roland were Sun, she knows her plants.) We come and a shared way of life. The area is home across an unusual variety of honey- to some of the most beautiful real estate in deep enough, we'd suckle. "It's one of the first things out in Baltimore, and some very interesting have Save the the spring—sometimes as early as Febru- people. It is a respite for thousands more ary. On a calm day, you can pick up the from outlying areas who use the park, or Whales." fragrance when you're about thirty feet just feel better knowing it is there. away." But however much it may be loved, all The trees are still so thick with autumn is not well with Lake Roland—and never land understand well the importance of leaves that we cannot see the lake until has been. A man-made lake built to sup- mass transportation. They know it will al- we're actually upon it. But very suddenly ply the city of Baltimore with water, it has leviate traffic congestion and air pollu- it is there, its surface as still as glass. We been filling up with silt since its begin- tion throughout Baltimore, and allow city stop a moment to take in the Sunday nings in 1861, threatening to dry up and dwellers unable to find employment near morning quiet and the colors of the re- return to its natural state as a meadow. Its their homes to get to abundant jobs in the maining leaves, muted by mist. dam, built to block the Jones Falls, has suburbs. They're also aware that they can Turning north, we head up along the been declared unsafe; engineers fear that easily be seen as NIMBY s—narrow - deserted path of the Green Spring Valley a severe storm may cause it to collapse, minded home owners unwilling to make branch of the Northern Central Railroad. flooding nearby Cross Keys and other personal sacrifices for the greater social The railroad used to carry commuters neighborhoods. The latest threat to the good, selfish members of a class of downtown from the 1830s to the 1950s, lake is light rail, the twenty-seven-mile "haves" whose political rallying cry is but was discontinued with the growing trolley system that the state plans to build, "Not In My Backyard. " popularity of the automobile. A good linking Hunt Valley with Baltimore- And yet, along with all this social con- mile through the thick woods, we reach Washington International Airport. scientiousness, there persists the trou- the old forty-foot-high trestle bridge that Despite an ongoing lawsuit and cost bling thought that standing by and runs over the Jones Falls. Below us, the overruns so embarrassingly high that watching as the train goes through—or al- water is muddy and shallow. This is a fa- Governor William Donald Schaefer de- lowing the lake to be compromised in any vorite spot among park aficionados, and clared a temporary halt on construction as of a number of ways—may not be for the today a couple from Ruxton is playing on penance, light rail likely will be coming greater good, either. With the environ- the banks with their children and their through Lake Roland as early as 1991. ment threatened so gravely everywhere, two Alaskan huskies. Rusty cannot seem Trolleys, some as long as seven buses put there's a new awareness of what will be to get along with the huskies, so we do not together, will roll through as often as 144 lost if this precious public slice of nature linger. times a day, at speeds of up to 55 miles per goes. After all, Lake Roland is not just As we head west, the vegetation hour, over a track that has been empty ex- Ruxton's backyard or Bare Hill's or changes. It's sparser here: long grasses cept for a Conrail freight train that pres- Woodbrook's, it's everyone's. and rocky outcroppings dotted with ently chugs along at just 5 m.p.h. three scrubby pine trees. These are the serpen- times a week. Though the light rail will be tine pine barrens, Adelaide explains. The cleaner and quieter than the diesel, peo- LANCO HAS BEEN LOOKING FOR A underlying mineral, serpentine, inhibits ple who love the Robert E.