Building a better trail crew

By DEIRDRE FLEMING, Staff Writer

Sunday, December 24, 2006

UNITY - It might seem that a school like Unity College -- one that calls itself "America's Environmental College" -- would have a trail crew modeled after the likes of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

The current Unity Trail Crew leaders would say, not yet, but hopefully soon.

A $1,000 grant to seniors Rachael Bahre and Ben Turati this fall allowed them to put the pieces in place to create a more active trail club.

They also had some help from a trail crew that already exists in the town's conservation-conscious community: the Unity Barn Raisers.

"The trail crew the last 10 years was run by students," said Unity College associate professor Tom Mullins. "Working with the Unity Barn Raisers, the trail crew wants to take it to the next level."

Bahre and Turati received a $500 grant from the Do Something youth foundation, the college matched it, and the Barn Raisers offered support.

The Barn Raisers is a community organization that works to preserve traditional buildings, the natural environment and Unity's small-town character. They are a community trail crew and more.

The purpose of the grant was not just to engage Unity students in trail work, but to get them working with the community, an unusual combination for a college, Miller said.

Unity College is 40 years old, but the student-run trail crew has been around for about 10 years.

The trail crew is only one way students at the environmental college become engaged with the open land around the school. However, Unity's trail crew is an important part of a college that regularly takes course work out into the forest, Mullins said.

"This trail goes by a vernal pool. Classes use it," Turati said while leading trail work at the school. "There are five professors who go out to the university forest on a regular basis to do course work."

COMMUNITY HELP

Jen Olsen, who works with the Barn Raisers, said the three grant-funded seminars Bahre and Turati held this fall drew a few dozen people from the college and the community trail group.

Olsen, the Barn Raisers community service leader, worked with Bahre, of Denmark, and Turati, of Shewsbury, Mass., to help them develop a trail crew training program.

One workshop was designed to teach basic trail maintenance.

Bahre and Turati taught this beginner trail workshop, which provided them with leadership experience and infused the trail crew with new energy.

"I knew more than I thought I did," Turati said.

From the Barn Raisers and guest speakers, the trail crew learned how to build bridges, steps and stone water bars, which are ditches that divert water away from trails.

But the biggest gain the Unity students got from the Barn Raisers, Olsen said, was learning how to keep a trail club going.

The Barn Raisers have a framework, which the student group needs, for getting projects done, Olsen said.

The community's trail group meets the same day, the same time every month. It's a simple ritual that could help the Unity trail crew develop into a longstanding tradition at Unity College, she said.

"Rachael and Ben want to take it to the next level," Olsen said. "The campus has a club night, when students can find out about clubs and when meetings are. That's been lacking with the trail crew. The students need a volunteer base."

IN THE FIELD

The half dozen or so regular volunteers who showed for one trail day have the energy needed.

In the old-growth forest around the small campus there are springs that create vernal pools and, in other areas, muddy runoff. There are three miles of trails on college land that connect to another four miles of trails owned by the town.

Students need to understand how to divert the water around the trails, so they don't wash out.

"This spring, there were a lot of water issues with soil erosion," Mullins said.

During a trail day Turati took a half dozen students to where a water bar had washed out.

"Every year, every bar has to be cleaned. The amount of water going through one of these puts sediment there. It wouldn't do the job," Turati said. "We have to make sure everything will flow right."

It wasn't a huge storm that led to the trail flooding; it was a need for basic maintenance.

The fall's soggy leaves clog the channel of rocks and it floods. The water spills over the trail.

Cleaning up just one season of leaves requires a field day.

The work amounts to nothing more than the students getting down on their knees and digging out the leaves.

Another water bar made from logs dug into the dirt is also washed out.

Turati and other students follow the log down to where it ends in a ditch, and dig out around the small wooden wall.

Throughout the seven miles of trails shared between the town and college, there are about nine of these water bars, Turati said.

It's amazing how the work needed on them adds up quickly, he said.

MOSTLY VOLUNTEERS

The Unity trail crew is a division of the parks and recreation department, but there are just two trail crew positions held by work-study students. The rest of the crew is made up of volunteers who help in their free time.

The paid positions are held by Bahre and Turati. What happens when these seniors graduate is an unknown, Olsen said.

There is no guarantee students interested in a career in parks and trail development will step in.

Miller hopes the small college will help fund the training seminars as it did this fall, to infuse the trail crew with hope.

For their part, Olsen said the Barn Raisers will help keep the trail crew interested in making the connected system of trails a source of communal pride.

"There is a lack of continuity," Olsen said. "We'd like to grow the volunteer base. So, when they graduate, (it's there). They can learn from the community."