The Blandair Review

Volume 1, Number 2

A World of No Horizon

Imagine the world outside your door completely developed. Everywhere you look you see the imprint of humanity: houses upon houses upon malls upon office buildings upon streets upon freeways. There may indeed be a scattering of trees lingering here and there, but the farm land you used to drive to just outside of town, "in the old days," is gone. Those acres of rolling cow pastures and fields of August corn that could relax your mind in a glance are now developments of look-alike white houses neatly circling their endless cul-de-sacs.

This is, in fact, not a world to be imagined. One could say it is already here. What remains is an ever- diminishing earth so cancer-stricken by development the patient is veritably waiting in trepidation for the doctor's "final" report. The problem is that the "final reports" are coming fast and furious but we, the inhabitants of the earth, are denying their findings. The now-famous "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," signed by over 1,600 members of the Union of Concerned Scientists, contains language that would seemingly be hard to ignore. The document's opening sentences read: "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society . . . . "

If these scientists, 102 of whom are Nobel Prize winners, find it the necessary and responsible thing to do to warn us in this fashion, it would certainly seem the responsible thing to do on our own part to heed this warning. We don't, though. Changing our over-consuming ways is a tough nut to crack. We love our gas-guzzling SUVs. We love our chemically-treated lawns that pollute our rivers and bays. And the developers among us love that stretch of farmland so vulnerable to development because it means oh, so much money.

What follows is the tale of two families who own such "vulnerable" land. One of these families shows the kind of bickering only greed can bring. These two families also happen to own land that is also quite historically significant. One of these family farms is the historical homestead of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the controversial doctor who set the broken leg of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, as Booth made his frantic escape to Virginia. In both cases, the sale of such land, as historian Edwin W. Bearss says, "would destroy the ambience of the setting, its isolation, and it would be a tragedy."

The three aging brothers of the other family have farmed their land for generations. Though they too indeed want to sell part of their land to ensure financial stability in their retirement, just whom they sell their land to is a refreshing matter of conscience in this all-too-often "follow-the-greed" scenario that constitutes development of our country's diminishing open lands.

The Tale of Two Families and Their Land

(The Blandair Foundation, located in Columbia, Maryland, twenty miles south of Baltimore, is currently involved in a legal battle to preserve the 300-acre, 18th century farm of the deceased Ms. Elizabeth Smith from development. The material for our article, "The Tale of Three Families and Their Land," is adapted from articles in The Baltimore Sun, whose own views are often sensitive to the environment.)

The Uptons

On the front page of the May 21, 2001 issue of The Baltimore Sun is a picture of Melvin Upton, 91, driving his tractor across the green fields of his Anne Arundel County, Maryland, farm. In plaid flannel shirt and faded green cap, Melvin squints through the sun at the camera, the big, studded tire of his tractor a symbol of the hard work needed to produce the rewards such a farm can yield. But Melvin's life is changing, and with it the prospects of keeping his farm. In the Sun's interview, he says, "This farm, all of it, is our retirement. We're getting very close to what you would call passing-away time."

The years before Melvin's stoical approach to his "passing-away time" were fruitful, abundant years for him and his brothers. It was a life of growing strawberries and peas and beans. "It was a good time we had here; we had a good childhood," the Sun quotes his daughter Muriel.

And now that the "passing-away time" is approaching, Melvin and his two brothers will sell part of their land, but not to the highest bidding developers. He wants to sell to a neighboring Catholic high school, Archbishop Spalding, whose president says, "Because of the Upton's background, because they were raised in a different generation, money isn't what drives them. They have a set of values. They are trying to maintain a part of the past."

Their own humane values, however, haven't stopped the encroachment of developers into nearby farms. While the Uptons endured the New Cut Road through their farm and the appearance of Wal-Mart and Target stores a half mile away, what was especially hard to take was the selling of the Wagner farm behind them. "It used to be pretty," Melvin told Sun reporter Rona Kobell, "before we got that," referring to the development of Daniel's Purchase which ends just a few feet from his garden.

This essay might well be titled, "Just a Few Feet from the Garden," for all its symbolic and representative import. For everywhere in the western hemisphere this might be the refrain sung by environmentalists: that our farm lands and our rural stretches of field and wood are increasingly "just a few feet" from the latest, ubiquitous housing development.

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," the poet Robert Frost wrote in 1914, bemoaning even the need of a stone wall between farms as unnecessary and constrictive. Now, however, how much further along the path of devolution we have come in our understanding of the need for open spaces is frightening. Most of us don't even flinch at the footsteps of developers taking a Wagner farm here, a Smith farm there, and an O'Reilly farm down the road a piece, as they rake the land clear of forest and meadow and song bird in order to sow the seeds of environmental destruction. Even those families with a higher order of values like the Uptons find they must sell their land for financial survival. They are indeed a diminishing breed of human in these times so driven by greed. Their having to sell their land is regrettable, but their choice to sell to a non-profit organization like Bishop Spalding High School as opposed to developers is a show of conscience all who are concerned about the environment must cling to.

The Mudds

"I just can't understand how anybody can be so greedy," Louise Mudd Arehart told Timothy Wheeler of the Sun, referring to her nephew who recently sold 187 acres of the historical-landmark Mudd farm to a Charles County developer. "He should have more respect for Charles County and its history," she said.

It was to this farm that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, made his frantic way on the night of April 14, 1865 after shooting the president. There, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd set the broken leg of Booth, who was later shot and killed in Virginia by a Cavalry patrol. Dr. Mudd's involvement with Booth has long been the subject of controversy among historians. According to the Sun report, Mudd had seen Booth three times in the previous six months and so is thought by many to have been in on the conspiracy to kill the president, though Mudd claimed not to know the man.

Although the Mudd house itself is a museum and 10 acres of the farm are protected from development through an easement held by the Maryland Historic Trust, Joseph Allan Mudd's selling of a large portion of the farm is a haunting harbinger of the increasingly conflicted spirit of the times. While it may be easy, for instance, to accuse Mudd of having no concern for the value of historical landmarks when he blithely says, "I'm not a fanatic about it. All good things come to an end," certainly the vast amounts of money thrown around by developers requires an extremely vigilant conscience to ignore. Mudd will receive $935,000 for his 187 acres from Kent Chadwick, owner of Maryland Quality Homes, as opposed to the $598, 400 offered by the State of Maryland.

To turn one's back on an extra $337,000 is quite difficult and highlights the classic struggle between the relatively abstract demands of conscience (and historical awareness, in this case) and the all-too-real allure of worldly things. Who wouldn't want to pocket such a sum?

In the end, as always then, it is, in fact, nothing less than a battle for one's soul: whether to offer allegiance to what one believes in, or to accept the payoff of an easier way. If Joseph Allan Mudd were to change his mind and take the lesser sum, he would be a hero to environmentalists. The problem, of course, is the need to be informed enough about what one should be loyal to. To know the importance of history is essential. To pay allegiance to it in the face of a huge money payoff would be saintly. Unfortunately, we must apparently look elsewhere for such a person of informed principal. In the end, however, if we do not know our history and care for it, we are orphans, easy prey to any fleeting influence. We will take the money and forget our heritage. We will be as leaves on a tree whose roots have just been cut--alive but dying.

Louise Mudd Arehart is alive and flourishing, however. "I think now I'm going to have to bug the governor of Maryland about this," she said. She will ask the State of Maryland to meet the developer's bid. She will ask the state to turn plowshares into more expensive swords.

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