Fueled by donuts to fortify ourselves against the chill, eleven hardy souls worked to improve and beautify the Audubon Newhall Preserve on Saturday April 9th. Our medium age was lowered considerably by two community service volunteers from Bluffton High School, Thaddaeus and Nathanael Rios. The “elders” included nine “Regulars:” Jim Reynolds, Sal Gioia, Julia and David Buzzard, Hilton Klein; Vice-Chairs Matt Matoon, and Rita Kernan, and Co-Chairs Jack Coleman and Bob Clemens. You’ll easily pick out the high school students in the group photo, but almost as important in the photo is the new handicap parking area, complete with a handicap sign and outlined with logs painted “safety” bright blue! This feature was suggested by Aliceon Stillman and Vice-Chair Lynn Hodgson, who have completed an accessibility certification for the Preserve. In addition, we have added wheelchair “bumpers” on the ramp to the deck on Newhall Pond, and several weeks ago Matt used a stump grinder to reduce roots on the pond perimeter trail. . On the Work Day, we had a crew locate and cover the remaining roots with safety blue paint. In the future we’ll add railings at the rear of the deck to make it less likely that visitors might back up to take a photo and find themselves on their backsides. Other crews removed vegetation to improve sight lines for our signage and spruced up the parking lot in our never-ending war against encroaching vegetation and pine cones. The Preserve has never looked better.
