RANGELEY – Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust and Rangeley Health and Wellness have partnered to create a greater variety of afterschool activities for the youth in the Rangeley region.
The first endeavor was the creation of The Children’s Trail behind Rangeley Family Medicine. RLHT staff, Alyssa Andrews and Amanda Laliberte, worked with 12 children for six weeks from conception to completion to create a trail.
“First the children walked the woods, identified property boundaries, and learned about game trails, and paths of least resistance,” said Laliberte. “They loved swamping around in the woods choosing the best path. It took us two weeks to determine the route of our proposed trail and then they really went to work.”
Children donned hard hats, safety glasses, and gloves to lop and move the tree branches and rake debris on their route. Along the way, they identified several unique features that they wanted to share with the public; natural benches, standing dead trees, and even wanting to remind visitors to look up through the canopy and breathe deeply while on the trail. Children then collected the shorter log lengths to create a “classroom” in the woods and each week showed off the progress to their parents.
The Children’s Trail is now complete and totals just over 2/10ths of a mile in length. Open to the community, it is available for exploration. Please note, that solid shoes and special care should be used when walking on the root covered trails of Maine.
Could Rangeley handle the notoriety of being discovered as being a national leader of creative afterschool programs for young school “kids”?
……………………just asking
This brought tears to my eyes. Finally, some creativity. As kids we always were”out in the woods” creating imaginary forts, places to play, and things to do. Getting in touch with their surroundings, well this IS where they live, work , and play. Perhaps~like me~ it will live in their hearts forever.
congratulations to one and all
That project is wonderful on so many levels. It gets the children outdoors, it involves them in project planning, management and implementation to completion, it provides an opportunity for group work and group thinking, it creates a trail system that they will continue to remember as one they created, and most of all, it give them credit for a job well done through their hard work, persistence and vision.
My congratulations to the children and to the Trust and wellness folks for this great project.