Over the course of six weeks during the summer of 2025, the Rooted Wisdom team worked with a group of Montgomery County Public School students in the Summer RISE initiative. After listening to interviews about the Harper Cabin, the students visited the cabin with Tony to discuss the role of memory in our understanding of history.

This is the fourth in a series of four episodes that explore the history of the Harper Cabin at Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton, MD.

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When Harper descendant, Faith Harper, steps through the threshold of the cabin that bears her family name—a structure that holds an important place in history—she sees “a home full of love.” Tony and Faith discuss what it means to be a Harper and the love that is the Harper Way.

This is the third in a series of four episodes that explore the history of the Harper Cabin at Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton, Md.

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In good practice historians rely on multiple sources of information to piece together the history of a building or place. Rebeccah Ballo, historian and preservationist, describes this standard as a three-legged bar stool; the physical, the paper trail, and the oral histories. Tony and Rebeccah investigate the historical context of preservation and how that last leg of the bar stool makes the documentation of the Harper Cabin so special.

This is the second in a series of four episodes that explore the history of the Harper Cabin at Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton, MD.

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A one and a half story log cabin sits tucked in the woods at Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton, MD. Prior to 1976, this cabin was a two-story house built in the 1870s in the post-emancipation free Black community of Jonesville, MD. For decades, its true history went untold. Tony visits with museum supervisor, Shirl Spicer to discuss the cabin’s two lives and efforts made to present a more accurate history of the structure.

This is the first in a series of four episodes that explore the history of the Harper Cabin at Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton, MD.

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On a biting cold mid-January day it’s a homecoming with no home. Harriet Tubman descendent, Douglas Mitchell, retraces Harriet’s footsteps along the wetland path of Dorchester County, Md. that his great-great-grand-aunt at one time traveled daily. This exact same path leads to the archaeological site of the Ben Ross Homeplace known as Ben’s 10. Douglas leads Tony on a rare opportunity to connect with what’s left of Harriet’s landscape.

Hear more from Douglass Mitchell in the Epsiode 5 Bonus—Douglas Mitchell: Lives Loved and Lost.

Learn more about the archeological work at the Ben’s 10 site in Episode 4—Ben’s 10: Fragments Unearthed.

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800 holes dug and a coin from 1808 serves as a beacon to keep digging for Ben’s 10, the homeplace of Harriet Tubman’s father, Ben Ross. Tony sits down with archeologist Julie Schablitsky, to examine unearthed artifacts that could shed light on the early life of Harriet and her family.

Hear from Harriet Tubman descendant, Douglas Mitchell about his experience at Ben’s 10 in Epsiode 5—Ben's 10: Interrupted Connection, and Epsiode 5 Bonus—Douglas Mitchell: Lives Loved and Lost

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Tony and David Greaves, a biologist, nature photographer, and founder of Nature Under Your Nose, look and listen to the birds of the forest. David discusses his interest in nature from an early age and shares barriers he faces being Black in the outdoors. Together they examine first hand accounts of freedom seekers describing nature and drawing on David’s experience as a biologist and photographer look to see what still remains in the landscape.

Part 3 of a 3 part series at Adkins Arboretum focused on how this history and our experiences today converge in nature.

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Tony is joined by Atiya Wells, founder and executive director of Backyard Basecamp in Baltimore, whose mission is to reconnect Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to land and nature. Atiya herself is a naturalist, certified wildlife tracker and certified in wilderness first aid. Through the landscape Tony and Atiya explore how knowledge and the connection to nature was passed down through the generations, and examine the supreme amount of sacrifice in those efforts.

Part 2 of a 3 part series at Adkins Arboretum focused on how this history and our experiences today converge in nature.

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