06 Oct Building a Yurt Platform
In the last week of September, the Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education class created a 20-foot diameter yurt platform. Building the platform was a class project that pushed the students to learn new skills, work as a team, and take part in building their future outdoor classroom. The platform is located in Thetford Hill State Forest in the Upper Picnic area on an existing slate foundation that once housed a pavilion.
The building of the yurt platform is a first step on improving and bringing back special places in the state forest. When the Goddard family first donated the land as a state forest one of their reasons for doing so was because so many people were already using the land, especially the upper picnic area, to watch sunrises and sunsets. Now with the yurt, a new campfire location and interpretive signs coming, the Thetford Outdoor Program is bringing life back to the once cherished spot.
The yurt will provide the Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education course a warm space to get out of the elements and a physical outdoor classroom space where they can conduct and analyze scientific experiments, read literature, and house interesting artifacts found in the woods.
“I think that building the yurt as a class has been a good experience because we will be able to use our own space that we have built ourselves. We will be able to look back and remember that we had built it with our own hands which makes it all the more our own personal space.
“It is also good that we are doing this project because it will hopefully be a permanent building that could be used by others as well. It could become another important building to the school and be used in future outdoor classes.” -TOP Student