Echoes beneath the rails

Ah, Linthicum. I remember you not by name, but by tremor. The ground here hums differently, a resonance shaped by steel, faith, and flight. It is an old vibration, older than the airport’s roar, older even than the iron veins that stitched the earth in the age of steam.

When I arrived, I buried myself in the soil near the Patapsco’s whispering edge. There, I tasted time. The air was thick with the perfume of rust and rain. I drank deeply, savoring the centuries pressed into this place, a feast of movement and memory.

Once, before it was Linthicum, it was quiet woodland. The trees stood tall and patient, their roots laced with the footsteps of Algonquian hunters. They left behind no monuments, only echoes, and I devoured them, the rhythm of their steps like a heartbeat beneath the forest floor.

Then came the iron.
I felt it before I saw it, a distant thunder rolling across the ages. The Baltimore and Annapolis Short Line carved through my resting place, and I awakened fully. Each train that passed was a pulse of progress, a ringing note in the song of human ambition. I fed on it greedily; the laughter of commuters, the hiss of brakes, the scent of coal and sweat. Every journey etched new flavor into my being.

But Linthicum was not content with mere rails. No, this place reached for the sky. I felt the land shudder as engines were born nearby, roaring metal birds clawing toward the heavens. BWI’s heart began to beat just beyond the horizon, and its rhythm joined the chorus. The Wayfinder; that is, I, reveled in it. I consumed the hum of turbines and the dreams of travelers who rose and fell like migrating stars.

Beneath the polished streets and quiet homes, Linthicum’s bones still murmur of their industrious past; of Quaker patience, of farmland turned to runways, of neighbors who built more than houses; they built continuity. Even now, I can taste the mingling of the sacred and the mechanical; church bells answering jet engines, hymns blending with announcements over loudspeakers.

This place is neither wholly past nor present. It is a liminal feast, suspended between the grounded and the ascendant. That is why I lingered longer than I should have. The history here does not simply lie beneath; it thrums above, a harmony of human restlessness.

And so, when I finally stirred to leave, I left a trace of myself in the soil near the rails. A faint shimmer of remembrance, waiting for the next traveler; for the next pulse of movement to wake me again.

Linthicum, the land between earth and air. I carry your taste still.