Take a Field Trip into the Northern Forest
Katharine Eneguess, President of White Mountains Community CollegeSummer session is underway here at White Mountains Community College, and we're pleased to have many students enrolled, studying everything from intro computer courses to history, from criminal justice to special education. Now seems like the perfect time for a field trip, and I've got one to recommend to the whole community, everyone who calls the White Mountain region home.
Take some time on June 20 to experience the second annual Cultural Heritage Festival at the Northern Forest Heritage Museum. Gates open at 11 a.m., and the Festival gives you free admission to the Heritage Park for the day, until 4:30 p.m.
We live in the most beautiful part of the state, and I'm sure everyone is aware, to some degree, of the history of the timber industry in the region, and of the area's culture and heritage that has been so influenced by the forest that is our home. If you're already an expert, invite a friend along on the field trip, or perhaps a grandchild or other young person who can have fun while absorbing our local history.
The day promises three great experiences for everyone who attends. The Cultural Heritage Festival, the Northern Forest Heritage Museum, and the traveling Ways of the Woods museum from the Northern Forest Center each look at our culture and heritage through a different lens.
The Festival will celebrate our immigrant heritage with great food. Taste Russian cabbage rolls & radish salad, German bratwurst & sauerkraut, Norwegian meat cakes & potato salad, Italian penne & meatballs, Canadian meat pies & coleslaw, and Irish Dublin coddle & soda bread. (Do not worry, there will also be hot dogs, burgers, bean-hole-beans and traditional festival snack food!) The Festival will also feature entertainment, crafts, homemade sweater sales, baked goods.
The Heritage Park and the Ways of the Woods—this is a full museum experience that travels the Northern Forest in a mural-covered, 53-foot tractor trailer—both focus on the history of how we've used the forest. The Heritage Park focuses in on the Brown Paper Company, timbering, paper making and living in the upper Androscoggin watershed.
Ways of the Woods tells a broader story, looking at the entire 30-million-acre Northern Forest (which includes our immediate neighbors in northern Maine and Vermont, as well as the Adirondacks and Tug Hill region of northern New York). It features multi-media displays inside the customized tractor-trailer, outdoor displays, artifacts and children's activities that help visitors look at how we have used the forest over time.
I'm on the board of directors for the Northern Forest Center, and several times I've watched people as they get completely absorbed in listening to the videos, or looking at the photo displays contributed by communities in all four states.
Speaking of the videos, there are two that you won't want to miss. One is an interview with Berlin's Barry Kelly of the White Mountain Lumber Company, talking about his family's history of running the sawmill here. The other is the latest addition to Ways of the Woods, a series of interviews with people who are at the cutting edge of forest research.
The research video is part of new exhibit content being added this summer that focuses on emerging economic opportunities based on the forest resource, and related scientific research on biofuels, engineered wood products, forest health and productivity and more.
I think the Ways of the Woods exhibit would be an excellent opportunity for students of all ages (and all community members) interested in environmental studies, spatial information technology, surveying, heritage and culture, and forestry to get a fun, informative immersion in our past relationship with the forest, and to prompt their thinking about the future—both the forest's future and their own career options.
There's an important economic connection to be made here as well. The Sustainable Economy Initiative, SEI, as we call it, crafted the first, 4-state economic strategy for the region, It provides an overall framework that our local economic initiatives can plug into, helping to leverage local efforts by connecting them to priorities across the four states. Ways of the Woods also has information about SEI's recommendations for anyone who is interested.
Almost 100,000 people have toured Ways of the Woods since we put it on the road in 2006. Come check it out on June 20, it will be a great field trip.
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