Visitor Center

This bombardment was led by one man — a crane operator who ripped into the brick building at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine at dawn's early light. "He's doing what the British couldn't do," park ranger Scott Sheads said jokingly about the contractor hired to demolish the structure at the fort, which defended Baltimore's harbor against the invaders during the War of 1812 and inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the poem that would become the national anthem.

Beating a peppy tempo on snare and bass drums, wearing white tights, boots, glitter and pompoms, the marching team strutted up the winding road under full morning sun, heading for a big Saturday event at … Cylburn Arboretum? Cylburn Arboretum, pastoral enclave of garden clubs, bird lovers and genteel ladies in large hats — that Cylburn Arboretum? Yes, that one. The "Dream Nation" marching unit was invited from the Cylburn community across Greenspring Avenue because it was the arboretum's grand opening after an 18-month hiatus and a new day at the preserve.

BEST BET Monday : Capt. Wayne Morgan will discuss mid-bay fishing techniques at a meeting of the Pasadena Sportfishing Group, 7:30 p.m., Earleigh Heights Fire Hall, Ritchie Highway and Magothy Bridge Road, Severna Park. Doors open at 6 p.m. for fishing talk. Dinner and refreshments are available for purchase. Details: 410-HEYFISH or pasadenasportfishing.com. BIKING Monday : Mountain bikers will meet to discuss restrictions on single-track riding at Loch Raven Reservoir by the City of Baltimore, 7 p.m., REI Timonium, 63 West Aylesbury Road.

KEMPTON, Pa. -- It begins before the leaves lose their green and ends after they have fallen to the ground: thousands of humans and thousands of birds of prey converging on a speck of granite to watch and be watched. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, not far outside Allentown, Pa., rises up into the migratory superhighway used by hawks, eagles and falcons as they make their way to their wintering grounds down South. Soaring birds conserve their energy by using air currents deflected and warmed by the mountain, corkscrewing upward on rising thermal columns and drafting close to the slope to propel themselves onward.

When Thomas Jefferson left the U.S. presidency 200 years ago this spring, no one needed to build a library or memorial to commemorate him. Jefferson already had a memorial in the form of Monticello, the mountaintop estate he created near Charlottesville, Va., long before he became the nation's third president in 1801. Jefferson felt so completely at home at Monticello that he almost never left the grounds from the spring of 1809 to the day he died in 1826. "I am as happy nowhere else and in no other society," he wrote in 1787, "and all my wishes end where I hope my days will end, at Monticello."

Brad Knudsen, manager of the Patuxent Research Refuge, has announced that the National Wildlife Visitor Center will open to the public Jan. 21 after being renovated. Its new heating and ventilation systems are designed to be more energy-efficient and cost-effective. The annual National Wildlife Refuge System birthday celebration will be held March 14 at the visitor center, and the Friends of Patuxent Wildlife Art Show and Sale will be held at the newly renovated facility March 28 and 29. The visitor center will be open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, except federal holidays.

We have built no national temple but the Capitol," U.S. Rep. Rufus Choate of Massachusetts said in 1833. "We consult no common oracle but the Constitution."

I grew up in Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge and Independence Hall, two of the most exalted places in American history. But it was always a little town to the west that stole the show - Gettysburg, where thousands fought to the death for the very soul of our country. And yet, despite numerous school field trips and family visits, Gettysburg and its sprawling Civil War battlefield always left me a little cold. I know that's heresy, especially for a native Pennsylvanian. Even worse, one of my ancestors was a Civil War veteran.

The state Board of Public Works has awarded Anne Arundel County $2.3 million to improve three parks, including building a visitor center at a popular Millersville park, developing a Crownsville park and improving athletic fields in Pasadena. Kinder Farm Park in Millersville will receive the bulk of the Program Open Space funding, with $1.1 million going to the design and construction of a 5,600-square-foot visitor center, the state announced. The 288-acre farm was purchased by the county in 1979 to educate visitors about Maryland's agrarian heritage and direct visitors to activities that include fishing, biking, hiking and picnicking.

Amid the vast fields and hiking trails and the miles of shoreline along the Patuxent River at the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Lothian sits a modest two-story home that was in dire need of repair a few years ago. Named the Plummer House for a family that once tilled the section of the sanctuary now called the Parris N. Glendening Nature Preserve, its shingles were falling off and the stairs were rotting. Now the Plummer House has been renovated through nearly $200,000 in federal and county grants and thousands of hours of volunteer work.