Girl Scouts clear trails to earn Silver Award

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 5^th, 2013 Natalie and I earned our Silver Awards. I guess all the hard work did pay off!!

Written by Heather Smith.
Learn more about the Moore Woodlands.