This quiet creek still flows secretly through Wyman Park Dell, unseen below our feet. In 1908 Baltimore constructed a new riverbed for Sumwalt Run, a brick and concrete tunnel to replace the stream’s meandering, rocky path. Workers filled and flattened the valley floor with 15 feet of packed earth. Today, dogs and frisbee throwers frolic across the Dell’s manicured walks and lawn, unaware of the stream still running beneath.

In this valley, the banks of Sumwalt Run once breathed in and out, shrinking and growing with droughts and deluges, changing with the seasons. Natural springs trickled in mossy channels from the hillsides. You can still find one of these springs bubbling up through the lawn. During wet seasons it turns part of the Dell into a mud bath for birds and neighborhood dogs.

Here beavers built dams along the run, and the roots of ancient oak and beech trees sculpted the hillsides as they reached down to drink its waters. An ecosystem of plants, animals, and insects adapted to the stream’s cycles. People also engineered Sumwalt Run with dams and ponds to harness its water for ice and agriculture. But unlike beavers and trees, people today rarely shift our own roots and patterns in time with nature’s rhythms. Instead we build walls and hidden drainage systems to create temporary illusions of control and tidiness. Our sewered waterways are like stick-figure drawings of a river. They bear little resemblance to the living bodies of water that once danced through the landscape.