In early October, fifteen Rocky Hill High School freshmen arrived at GMCT’s Wood Parcel for a hard morning’s work. Students and their two advisers helped clean and improve the trails to make the paths more accessible to wheel chair enabled nature lovers.
For two hours, teams of students removed tree roots, loaded and hefted wheel barrow loads of stone dust up and down the trail slopes, and spread them over bigger roots and rocks to smooth the way for wheel chairs and hikers seeking a dose of nature.
After a break for lunch at the Ferry Landing, the group proceeded to the DiPaola Parcel in Rocky hill. Although the closed meadow gates are keeping the meadow road cleaner, the students found plenty of accumulated trash to pick up on the way to the DiPaola parcel and along the Goff Brook Trail.
The RHHS students worked the road and the trail on the DiPaola parcel, rooting out trash half buried from past years or from the annual spring freshets that flood the road most years. Goff Brook backs up from the River, overflows its banks, leaving behind flotsam and ietsom swept down from Mill Woods park and off roads south Wethersfield and north Rocky Hill.
This work day was all part of the Lend-a-Paw program in which RHHS students engage in community service starting in their freshman year. By senior year, they must meet the requirement for a specific number of volunteer community service hours as part of their Capstone Project. GMCT is grateful for the opportunity to provide meaningful conservation work to help students achieve their goals and learn about community needs.