PUBLISHED: November 4, 2025 at 12:45 PM EST
In the game of genetic roulette, my sisters got the gene for nature, and I got the one for urban dynamism. Each of them found renewal in landscapes, but I was energized by city views. So, 10 years ago, when I decided to sell my home in bosky Dickeyville, I was surprised to discover that wherever I lived next, my body and mind still craved the sight of green. “Move down to Mount Vernon,” a friend urged, but I demurred and bought a fifth-floor condo in Roland Park, where I enjoy seeing treetops, pillowy clouds and spectacular sunsets.
Despite being a highly evolved species, we humans remain animals. However much we may think, plan, love and grieve, we can do so only within the assemblage of tissues, organs, sinew and bone that are our bodies, our mammalian bodies. And these bodies retain an atavistic need to experience nature just as they did 300,000 years ago, when modern humans developed and their lives depended on seeing, hearing and smelling what other species were up.
That is why I am so grateful to the Roland Park Community Foundation for its decades-long effort to bring Hillside Park, Baltimore’s first park in 100 years, to fruition. With its $9.2 million purchase of 20 acres from the Baltimore Country Club, the foundation has given me the opportunity to ramble across a meadow and stumble over a stream. It has also secured an exquisite green space for generations of Baltimoreans to come…