Christmastime in Baltimore. The trees are completely barren. The air grows nippy, and if you stay awake long into the night, you'll sometimes catch a few snowflakes falling outside your window, but they are gone long before the morning comes. From Thanksgiving onward it is constantly Black Friday, and wherever you walk downtown, the streets are lined with holiday shoppers warmly dressed in peacoats and scarves. The days are short, so that on the weekends, you have no excuse not to sleep in, and when you step out the door for your dinner date, the street lamps are already flickering.
On the west side of the Harbor, a circle of red and white booths festooned with lights appears mysteriously overnight. Holding hands with your date, you walk from the other side of town to investigate, finding a veritable village of crepes and pretzels, ales and ciders, squeaky cheeses-on-sticks. At Baltimore's annual German Christmas Market, you run your hands through alpaca wool sweaters from Peru and gaze at glass displays full of dolls and delicate ornaments. Under the main tent, the harpist plays holiday tunes for an enchanted crowd. There is a booth that sells every variety of chocolate-covered nut.
This year, it is my turn to stay home and tend to the cats while Jane returns to California. Before she leaves, we reach into the highest kitchen cupboard and unfurl four strings of holiday lights, one for each of our windowsills. The cats watch as we decorate; Honeydew mindlessly enraptured, Charlotte assessing each LED bulb for threat and nutrition potential. After Jane leaves, the three of us stay up late into the night. I read by lamplight, while the cats diligently wait for me to grow tired.
With Jane out of town, every day is a day for exploration. I sleep in late and eat lunch for breakfast. In the afternoon on Christmas Day, I drive out to Soldier's Delight (35 minutes northwest) and walk the serpentine trail. Not 10 minutes from the car, I am trodding on ancient seafloor through a barren prairie. I have been transported from Baltimore to Nebraska and backwards in geologic time. The sun cruises along a low, elliptical path across the western sky, producing the golden, honey light so beloved by photographers in the winter. I work among the tall reeds of grass.
Jane is not here, and I have no one to entertain beside myself, nothing to worry about aside from my imagination. I can point to a spot on the map and go. On my way back from the prairieland, I take the car on a detour along Deer Park Road. There is a reservoir here - Liberty - which was created in the 1950s by damming a northern branch of the Patapsco River. The mill towns in the valley are now underwater, its tenants long disappeared. Now it is a lake for fishermen, boaters, and sunset photographers like me. An entire region altered, acres flooded, communities uprooted. Multi-purpose recreation. I turn off at what I wrongly believe to be the trailhead to Piney Point. Forgivingly, the path through the woods quickly leads me to the shore. There are no other cars parked aside from mine, but the track through the thorny bramble is well-trodden, and a tiny spit of land that juts barely fifty yards into the lake is home to numerous beer bottle fragments. I find a spot clear of broken glass, and I sit beside the lake. The water is completely flat and smooth like a mirror, the trees still and somber. On the distant shore there is a small splash and a flurry of motion - two white-tailed deer, having spotted me, disappear together into the woods. In a cove far, far away, a portable radio is playing country music; I can hear it drifting toward me around one bend of the lake, another, and another.
This is Christmas in Baltimore. The sun slowly disappears behind the trees, and the light fades as I make my way back to the car. Traffic along the beltway is minimal as I head home, and when I turn into the driveway, the lights in the window are already aglow.
