Environmental Club’s Path to a Greener World

Arlie Munday

The billboard that shows a map of the environmental trail

Arlie Munday, Staff Writer

This past year, the Environment Club has been making big moves, however, one accomplishment easily stands out above the rest. The Environmental Club has built a nature trail on school grounds. 

The newly constructed trail is right between the football field and the tennis courts, right behind the teacher’s parking lot. It starts fairly open, with lots of little ferns to observe, but quickly transitions to a path surrounded by trees and small hills. It crosses through another small path and then dips behind the tennis courts. This continues for a little bit until there is an encounter with a fork in the road.

It doesn’t really matter if you go right or left, because it ends up being a loop, so you’ll experience both paths anyways. Along this loop, you’ll be able to view a large portion of the Colonial Forge neighborhood, as well as a dainty stream.

“It’s going to be a teaching tool,” said Mr. Heller, the sponsor for the Environmental Club.

He intends for the trail to be used for classes such as Environmental Science and Biology, as well as anyone who wants to learn something.

“It’s going to be a good outdoor classroom,” Heller said.

This isn’t the first trail that has been built at this school. In fact, there used to be another trail, but the Colonial Forge neighborhood built over it.

“Maybe a year or two ago I thought about doing one here because now the field has grown up so much, that it actually lent itself to it,” said Mr. Heller.

Building the trail itself was no mean feat either. It took many volunteers from people in and out of the Environmental Club to make it, and they had to get permission from many people to be allowed to build it in the first place.

“I had to call Utility, make sure there are no gas lines that run where we’ll put the billboard…and approval from Mr. Daniel and Central Office that we could actually build it,” said, Mr. Heller

Now the trail is complete and is in fully functional use, Heller plans to incorporate the nature trail within his curriculum for the next school year.