Picture a valley, descending 40 feet below where you now stand, its slopes lined with ancient beech trees whose branches reach out over a rocky creek. Beaver dams and small ponds punctuate the creek with green oases. Dragonflies buzz circles around lily flowers, and bullfrogs croak from the reeds. Millions of plants, animals, and insects lived here, drawing life from the stream.

People lived here as well. For thousands of years before white colonists settled in the area, Indigenous North Americans had their own relationships to local waterways. People made their camps and homes near streams, with ready access to clean water, fish and game. European colonists took the names of their waterways — Chesapeake, Patapsco, Potomac, Susquehanna — then took the land and water itself.

Like Sumwalt Run, the histories of the Susquehannock, Piscataway, and previous peoples of this area were buried and paved over. But today through archival research, oral histories, and archeology, historians and tribal descendants are working to uncover and bring daylight to hidden narratives of Maryland’s indigenous peoples. Their more intentional footprint on the landscape holds lessons about reconnecting our own places to the rhythms of nature. Whether through Indigenous land management techniques or biophilic design principles, can humans reestablish a deliberate and collaborative relationship with our natural environment?