The Greenbelt Pumpkin Festival kicked off a second weekend of community carving and a walk in Roosevelt Center on Friday, October 18.
The day began for volunteers around 7 a.m. as they moved 300 pumpkins for carving from the parking lot to the center and set up tables with buckets so the pumpkin innards could be composted. At 4 p.m., the event officially started as participants began to pour in.
Upon arrival, carvers were given instructions and a pumpkin and went off to carve. Once their pumpkin was complete, it was brought to the stage to join the other carved pumpkins before they were shipped off for the Pumpkin Walk.
According to this year’s Pumpkin Queen Stacy Stewart, the organizer of the event, they “usually run out [of pumpkins] around 8 p.m.”; however, this year, they were out of their supply a little bit after 6 p.m.
Around the time they ran out of pumpkins, the Greenbelt Honk! Situation began to perform a seasonal selection of music and the Witches of Greenshire also performed a dance. As night began to fall, the area was illuminated by the candle-lit pumpkins on stage.
The event as a whole began in 1988 to protect what would later become the Greenbelt Forest Preserve. “There was some talk about the city selling the wooded area to developers,” said Stewart. “There was a dedicated group of Greenbelters who did not want to see that happen.”
The group came up with ways to get people into the woods to appreciate its beauty. One of the ideas was the Pumpkin Walk and it was a success, becoming a tradition that Greenbelt resident Gail Rohrbach dubbed “a quintessential Greenbelt experience.”
Rohrbach has been participating in the carving since she moved to Greenbelt, and this was her and her family’s first time back since the pandemic. “It’s kind of rejuvenating,” she said. “It’s nice to have something like this that happens all the time that kind of washes away the stress of everyday life.”
The carving event was one part of the weekend’s Greenbelt Pumpkin Festival, as the carved pumpkins were then taken to the Greenbelt Forest Preserve where the Pumpkin Walk took place Saturday night. Sunday morning the pumpkins were made available to be taken home.
The event as a whole not only serves as a way to protect the Greenbelt Forest Preserve, but it also brings together the community. “There’s nothing you could do here that would make you stand out as not fitting in,” said Rohrbach. “Everybody’s welcome.”
The carving in Roosevelt Center and Pumpkin Walk in the North Woods came after similar events the prior weekend at Schrom Hills Park in Greenbelt East. Next weekend will see a community Pumpkin Carving in Greenbelt West on Friday, October 25 from 5 to 7 p.m., behind Beltway Plaza.
Jake Ballard is a student at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism writing for the News Review.