By Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The Sweet Home High School natural resources program has taken up a off-and-on effort to turn the woods on the southeast side of Foster School into an outdoor classroom and park space.
Construction Trades teacher Dustin Nichol and Angela Clegg, the former education coordinator with the South Santiam Watershed Council, started the project about four years ago. Blake Manley and his natural resources students resumed the problem this year.
About a dozen students went out on May 24, before the school year ended, to remove vegetation and spread gravel on the paths. Nichol and Manley had already completed some preparation in the area.
The area has dirt trails throughout the small forest, which sits between Highway 20 and the softball fields behind the school. Blackberries divide a grove of deciduous trees from a grove of evergreens. The east edge includes a trail along the railroad line.
“We’re taking and making paths and making it so that all the students can go out there and look at the forest,” said sophomore Lizzie Duncan. “We’re making it so it’s wheelchair-accessible. We got pretty far.”
“And then we cleared another one,” said sophomore Shelbey Nichol said.
“We want this to be usable in a year,” Manley said. “Here’s a classroom in a forest.”
The area will have 3-foot-wide gravel trails, with plaques marking various plant and tree species, Duncan said.
“Next is tearing all the blackberries out, graveling paths and cutting down trees,” he said.
Adults will cut down the trees selected for removal, Manley said, and he and Dustin Nichol plan to work on it during the summer.
“We’re going to put a big circle in the middle,” he said. He would like to see a picnic table or something at the center of that circle. Gravel paths will lead to a trail system throughout the forest.
The group will carry on Dustin Nichol’s idea to leave part of the forest along as a control to compare with the managed part of the park.
“I think it’s cool that we can do something for our community and our School District and our kids, so they can learn about that stuff at an early age,” Shelbey Nichol said. “It’s just something they can go out and see the wilderness isn’t that far away from town. That’s somewhere you can go with your families and have a fun day” – and with the adjacent field, it’s a place where they can play games.
“One of the teachers (at Foster) said he’d like to use this,” Manley said.