I’m sad to see that no one has mapped, mentioned or marked the
little dirt trails branching off the Jones Falls Bike Trail in Druid Hill
Park. Thus far in my year in Baltimore I’ve
avoided the whole park out of fear of the local residents and because I’ve
found so many miles of quiet trails to explore at Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park and
Patapsco Valley State Park. But since I
often wake up too late to drive very far and I try to avoid just running from
my front door down the sidewalks, I’ve been pushed to explore the rather close
Druid Hill Park.
Again, about a year after my arrival and first glimpse of “the
scary park” I’ve discovered a different sort of park than I envisioned. First, the people. There are plenty of Baltimore crazies out
there. But honestly, the ones who take
the time to go out to the park tend to be the low-key, nicer type. They learn to recognize you, say hi to you
and treat you pretty well. However,
most of the people there are there for the same reason you probably are: to
run, bike, or just walk around. They
also tend to recognize you, say hi to you and treat you pretty well. It’s not such a scary park. True, I might not run through the more
forested part at night, especially if I were a young, female. That doesn’t really apply to the daytime.
Secondly, it turns out that the park is pretty big. You can still see the big, green dot the park
occupies even if you’re zoomed out of the Baltimore beltway pretty far. Consider: it houses a reservoir, a zoo and a Frisbee
golf course, a botanical garden, plus quite a bit of other usable green space.
I guess the point is both that I’m sad for not having spent
more time there but excited that I’ve gotten around to exploring it now. I started with the reservoir loop and
discovered some public exercise equipment.
I know most people are in the techno-gyms lifting 50-lb circuit boards
and achieving better results than Rocky Balboa in his home gym (cue the
juxtaposition of Rocky vs the Russian in Rocky IV . . .), but when you’re poor
it’s not so bad to use a purple, 30-lb shoulder press bar in the middle of a
park.
Beyond the loop, the Jones Falls Bike Trail runs through the
park. If Google.Maps is to be trusted,
it runs about 1.7 miles from the reservoir back to the edge of the park. The fun part about it is that it manages to
get away from people for at least one relaxing chunk of the trail. Sadly, while it takes you past the zoo, it
doesn’t allow you a view of any of the exhibits—by design, I realize, but I can
still lament.
But the entire reason I wanted to fling this line of text
out into cyber space is in the hopes of catching anyone who is trying to find a
bit of dirt within the city. Yes, I know
there are other options and I also realize that anyone looking to train for a
trail race will need something more substantial like GunPowder, Patapsco or the
not really a trail NCR. But there are
actually some dirt tracks that run you around Druid Hill Park.
Thus far, I’ve only just discovered them and have little
more than an intention to chase them down.
But up where the Bike Path meets the north end of the park, there are
two dirt trails that branch off the road on either side and take you a fair distance away from
the bike path. Along the way they branch
off into other little trails. Time didn’t
permit me to do more than about a mile total but that’s a start, there was plenty of trail ahead of me yet to run, and it's considerably
better than running along North Avenue. There is another up by the zoo hospital, but I'm not yet sure if this is part of the Frisbee golf trail chain.
As soon as I got home I started snooping around the internet
(I actually ate) and found nothing about how many little trails there are,
where they start out or meet or anything.
Which led me to writing this: little more than an infatuated ode to a
park that I just got a crush on. I’m
glad there turns out to be a very substantial amount of green space in what isn't as dingy of a city as I first took it to be.
