I spend a lot of time in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park, which has an amazing history. It’s been an urban oasis, flashpoint in the city’s segregation past, the setting for a disturbingly high number of suicides and true crime stories, the home of the Maryland Zoo and Rawlings Conservatory, several graveyards, and so much more. 

Druid Hill Park also has an incredible collection of tree graffiti, particularly on the north side where the Jones Fall Trail enters at Woodberry and among the wooded hillsides scattered with disk golf fairways. Beech trees offer a perfect canvas for carving; the wood is soft, the bark smooth.

Proclamations of love – some dating back to the 1940s – are classics of the genre, but there are plenty of other stories captured in bark. Whenever I see a carving that’s still legible, read the words left on a tree for me and everyone else to see, I always think: how that worked out? Over at Baltimore Endings (@baltimore.endings) on Instagram I take my own stab at finishing those stories. Take a look if you’re interested. Here are a few examples:

My process for creating these photographs is fairly straightforward. I take my hound C.B. for a walk and take pictures of possible candidates. I live with the pics for a while, thinking about the person who, blade in hand, decided to permanently deface a tree. Do they remember this moment fondly, if at all? Is this a location they revisit or look back to in embarrassment?

Once I have an idea, I print the tags and venture back into the woods with the red tack in hand to finish the story for them using my iPhone 13 Pro. I do remove to them when I’m done taking the pictures; Druid Hill Park has enough waste and trash going on.