Rodricks: Savoring the Yock, the wild and scenic river along ‘Maryland’s last frontier’

I drive through counties — Howard, Harford, Anne Arundel, Carroll or Frederick — and I see earth movers tearing up the landscape and houses being built, and I think: If Baltimore was a better city, if more people wanted urban life, if there were affordable, detached single-family homes built on all the old vacant lots, the whole region would be better off: Baltimore would have a growing population and there would be more open space and woodlands in the suburbs. I had these fantastical thoughts again the other day. I drove along a stretch of Old Court Road in Baltimore County that, last I journeyed there, was farmland, or it might have been woods or a meadow. I don’t recall exactly, but it was definitely not what I found — a paved street with half-acre lots for new homes.