Fort Howard-Edgemere: A Little Bit of Therapy on the Way to Work

I love my commute. 

Each morning on the way in to work, wherever that may be on any given day since I have a "work from home" job, I have to pinch myself and remind myself where I am.

The first scene that fills me with a sense of peacefulness and wonder comes at the corner of Old Bay and North Point roads, where I get my first view of the community's beautiful waterfront vista as seen from the Marzocchi property. I smile every morning when I see the "boat house" memorial, the garden of which is maturing nicely 10 years after Tropical Storm Isabel destroyed the brick boat-shaped home that was a local landmark.

When it was determined the house received too much storm damage to save it, Tony Marzocchi decided to leave a portion of the "stern" up as a monument to his family's history on the land.

I make a left at the boat house garden and drive up North Point Road. It doesn't take long to be surrounded by farm fields that stretch nearly to the water on both sides on the peninsular road. This past summer, which saw abundant—some would say too much— rain, the soybean and corn crops grew taller and more robust than in some recent growing seasons. The soybean plants were particularly verdant.

The corn fields have mostly been harvested now and the deep-green soybean plants have gone from yellow to brown and await harvesting. it won't be long until those same fields are prepared for winter cover crops.

The throwback painted sign on the side of the former Fort Howard Hardware Store elicits another smile because I think of the barnside advertisement era that I'm not old enough to actually have experienced.

Not long in to my drive, I pass Todd's Inheritance, a homestead that stayed in the same family's hands for nearly 300 years and played an integral role in the Battle of North Point during the War of 1812.

Just past the Todd house, fields dotted with black angus cattle come into view and past the cattle farm, more corn and soybean fields roll out across the horizon.

The next landmark is North Point State Park—which preserved the land once occupied by the Bay Shore Amusement Park—followed by yet more farm fields before they yield to downtown Edgemere, the center of which includes restaurants, bars, a bank, a title company, a seafood shop, an elementary school (which sits at the town's lone traffic light), a gas station and a VFW hall.

There are a couple of places in Edgemere where I work, thanks to business owners who provide free wifi service to their customers, so I can choose to stay right in town to work for the day if I choose.

With some changing responsibilities, I now try to get to Parkville a couple of times a week, but there's nothing redeeming nor comforting about driving on the Baltimore Beltway, and most of you are probably way too intimately familiar with that routine.

I thought I'd shared a bit of a commute few are privileged to experience—at least the few of us who live in a still-rural, history-rich community less than 15 miles from the hustle and bustle of downtown Baltimore.

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