7 mile walk from Relay to Ellicott City 1919

Illchester had a "medieval air" and "nothing very modern" while Ellicott City felt like being "in Europe again. These old houses with their balconies, their stone walls either orange and tawny as the quarries yielded them, or washed with pale pinks and yellows and blues, Italian fashion."  The flour from the Patapsco mill "so familiar to your grocer's shelves."

THE PATAPSCO RIVER ROAD

By Anne Brook

AS the spring of the year comes on—so often in beautiful slow processional, but this year at a rather jerky gait—and as signs of its progress begin to show even in city streets, many of us reach about for outlets to the country to see what is really going on. The superior air that city dwellers wear for six months of the year has left us. Now we openly envy our country friends, whom but a few weeks ago we pitied.

One of the loveliest outlets for our spring feelings may be a seven-mile walk along the Patapsco River between Relay and Ellicott City. There are, of course, opposing factions even over this peaceful diversion. Some like to start at Ellicott City and walk down to Relay. Others can consider nothing but taking the train to Relay and walking up to Ellicott City. Personally I am strongly on the side of the latter.

For as you leave the train and dive down a steep bank to the river level, you have only to go a little way along the road, cross a bridge and leave it well behind you, to find yourself in the heart of the woods, back to first principles. And first principles are surely the best for a beginning. There is the river, the color of Chinese jade, and almost as smooth and cool. There are the woods, with great trees, deep undergrowth and threading vines that weave the two into a marvelous green pattern. There are white brooks leaping down broad boulders and diving to join the river under the little bridges that carry the road. That soft road and yourself are the only visible signs of modernity. Yet the road is not so very modern, and you need not be.

Suppose you go on a Sunday—most of us do. You may be a little,remorseful that you are missing church, but then if you had not gone, you would have spent much more time over the Sunday papers than over going to church. Now, along this stretch of road a great deal is happening, chiefly things that have no "news value" for those journals. Sometimes it is the first white bloodroot, always with a rare look about it. Sometimes through a green haze of young leaves you almost think you see great white wings, and it is the first dogwood. There are dramatic events in the glint of a blue bird, the flame of a cardinal across the sky. Everywhere is growth, fecundity. Really it is more exciting than the dubious news the papers think it wiser to give us.

Then, as you go deeper into the woods that over-bear the road, you may find perhaps that it was just as well you missed church. For these woods that are uncheapened by too many people, that belong so entirely to themselves, hold a presence within them which may fill your mind, if you open it, with a sense of awe and worship. In the old days, men feared in the forest the power of the great god Pan, and so it is we made the word "panic" for the sudden terror that possessed them. Now Pan has changed along with us, and merged into that great divine spirit which in its many manifestations fills the world—and so instead of fear you may find here in the forest a solemn joy in a beautiful presence.

Now all this while, physically it is three or four miles, you have been in a pagan age, which yet was an age of faith. But history goes on. The river bends suddenly. You see an old bridge, a sharp hill at the turn of the road and overhanging you a long building with a medieval air. You are coming to Ilchester. There is nothing very modern about the Ilchester that you will see. Its old stone houses crowd up the steep river-bank above you, and the children along the road seem quite undisturbed by progress. But you have come out of the forest into a social community. You very nearly replace the hat which you have undoubtedly taken off.

The road goes on very pleasantly beside the river. There are brilliant flashes of judas-tree and dogwood against the young green leaves. You may feel with Arthur Symonds:

"The colors of the world are in a plot 

To snatch my spirit from me through the eyes; 

They dance before me in a weedy knot 

 Of woodland broideries." 

Or, if calmer, more detached, you may put yourself in Henry Adams' place and think that fifty years ago also "the tulip and the chestnut gave no sense of struggle against a stingy nature. The soft full outlines of the landscape carried no hidden horror of glaciers in its bosom . . . No European spring had shown him the same intermixture of delicate grace and passionate depravity that marked the Maryland May." 

And so considering you may come upon the outskirts of Ellicott City. In spite of Adams you may almost think yourself in Europe again. These old houses with their balconies, their stone walls either orange and tawny as the quarries yielded them, or washed with pale pinks and yellows and blues, Italian fashion; with their jonquilled gardens and veils of wisteria, have an over-sea look about them. It is something of a shock to find just beyond them the Patapsco flour-mills so familiar to your grocer's shelves.

And so with a parting look up the cobbled climbing street that winds through that surprising hill-town, you turn your back on Ellicott City and take the car home. If perhaps you are tired and many people crowd you, look carefully at each of them. You will see that some are carrying flowers and that there is a rested look in the face of most. For they have been today brothers and sisters of Antaeus and have drawn new strength from the old earth.

City and State vol. 1 April 1919

CITY AND STATE—A Maryland Journal of Civic and Social Progress Published monthly on the 15th of the month by the Baltimore Alliance and the Women's Civic League

©2019 Patricia Bixler Reber
Forgotten history of Ellicott City & Howard County MD