All
our hard work has paid off! My fellow troop member Natalie Schafer
and I, Heather Smith, wanted to earn our Silver Award together, the
highest ranking award for a Cadette girl scout. Our troop leader,
Mary Schafer, met Joellen Anderson, the chair of the Groton town committee of Avalonia Land Conservancy, at a Girl Scout event. Joellen
thought it would be a great idea to clear trails, and get more people
to use the trail at ALC's Moore Woodlands
Preserve in Groton as our Silver Award project. Natalie and I, of
course, said yes to the idea and started as soon as we could.
 |
| Girl Scouts on the Moore Woodlands. |
We
started in November of 2012. First, we found a trail that needed to
be cleared and Joellen gave us permission to name the trail. We
thought of calling it Mother Nature’s Highway because the trail
ends at Route 215. Throughout the fall, we cleared and blazed Mother
Nature’s Highway. The blazing was a fun experience for us because
we had no idea how to blaze or what the blazes mean, but Joellen
taught us how to, and what they mean, and we successfully blazed the
trail.
In
the spring, we started clearing the trail again. We couldn’t do
anything outdoors during the winter because there was so much snow on
the ground. However, we did make an “I Spy” hunt for the children
that use the trail. We also typed up a flyer to advertise that we
were working on the trail. Finally, we created letterboxes for our
trail. The theme of the letterbox series was trees. After the messy
winter was over we went straight to work. We made bee boxes for the
Mason bees in the Moore Woodlands. Then, Joellen told us there was
another trail that needed clearing and blazing. The trail was called
Town’s End. After we cleared and blazed, we thought of an idea to
install bridges in at the end of Mother Nature’s Highway because
there was a little stream that you had to jump over to get across.
First, we need to see if we needed a permit to be able to install the
bridges. We presented our ideas in front of the Town of Groton Inland
Wetland Agency, and they determined that we didn’t need a permit to
install the bridges. After that we built the bridges, and installed
them on the property.
In
the end, we needed only a few more hours to complete our Silver badge
requirements. Natalie and Joellen thought of holding a big hike
after we finished to show how hard we worked and all of the progress
we made. We held the hike and showed the trail. Then Joellen told us
about a six mile hike that ended at Avalonia’s Town’s End. We
served fruit, cookies, and water to all of the exhausted hikers.
After we served the snacks to the hikers we had completed our fifty
hours of work! And finally, on June 5th,
2013 Natalie and I earned our Silver Awards. I guess all the hard
work did pay off!!
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