When I was a kid in the sixties...
...I occasionally played in this small stream in the Springfield Woods in our historic (although we didn't know it was historic) Wilson Park neighborhood in Baltimore, MD.
Dwaine, Bobby, Mitchell, my brother Bruce and I would run through the small forest catching snakes and salamanders. Some we would keep as pets, some we would sell or barter with other kids in other neighborhoods. Dwaine and I made a killing when we found a beautiful and rare albino garter snake, which we sold to a classmate.
But I do digress.
A few decades later, when I returned to my Wilson Park neighborhood after living elsewhere, I wondered what happened to that little stream.
No one seemed to know or even cared, assuming that the little spring just dried up over the years. Even a couple of educated friends clearly stated that the water table was most likely all gone now and there couldn't possibly be water underneath the neighborhood and the woods. Surely the city would've cut all that water off by now and diverted it into some kind of underground pipe which would empty into a sewer and into the bay.
Being curious, I entered the serious thicket of sticker bushes and poison ivy of the present day Springfield Woods and discovered to my surprise that the little spring was indeed still springing! The spring flows directly out of the earth and could still possibly be a fresh water spring. (No, I have not taken a drink yet. The water still has to be tested!) Despite all the junk, sediment and debris, that water was still flowing and it is clear and doesn't smell like polluted water. Believe it or not.
After informing a a few neighbors, who just looked at the trash filled mud puddle as just that, which, to be honest, it was, I convinced a couple of them to spend an hour of so helping me begin the task of cleaning it out. And thus began the Friends of the Springfield Woods of Wilson Park, Baltimore.
This is how it looked when we started cleaning it in January of 2012.
-- Butch Berry
