Autumn and I were joined by my friend Chrisa this year as we returned to Wyman Park in Baltimore, MD. This area is in the city and has a stream that has been plagued by a lot of debris which cuts off the flow of the water. There were usually large tree branches piled up which then led to catching large amounts of garbage. We started seeing work being done in the park last year. And when we returned this year, we were amazed at how freely the stream was flowing. It is aided by a concrete basin, so it has an urban feel, but the debris and garbage was all but cleared away. We used to bring garbage bags to clean up. It was very hard to even find garbage this time. We also noticed that there were many more flowers, butterflies, and birds. We sensed the park is healing. We offered fresh tobacco leaves to the land and drummed over it. We made our bird as seen attached. It is camouflaged because there was so little garbage to set it off.

We felt very grateful that we have witnessed this transformation, even as the land is probably still being affected by pollution and invasive weeds. But it did give us a sense of hope.