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By Robby McKittrick
Hometown Weekly Reporter
A new boardwalk that connects Jarvis Farm and the Walpole Town Forest is almost complete. The boardwalk, which is funded by the Department of Conservation and Recreation and managed by the Walpole Trails Committee, is scheduled to be completed by the Jarvis Harvest Festival on Oct. 13.
The boardwalk is 200 feet long and is supposed to encourage people to hike and be more active in the Walpole area.
“[A boardwalk] gets people outside,” said Glenn Maffei, the vice chairman of the Walpole Trails Committee. “It’s a reason to hike. It’s a reason to explore further [because] you can go from the Walpole Forest to Jarvis Farm and back … I like to hike, and I like to see more people do it, young and old.”
Glenn Maffei, Todd Collins, Gary Riggott, and Joseph Grant are four specific Walpole members who were influential in the making of the boardwalk.
“Gary is a guy that comes out here and gets stuff done,” said Maffei. “He is the lead volunteer.”
Maffei explained that Gary Riggott had the idea from “conception” and “ran with it.”
“If you give Gary an obstacle, he is going to find a way around it,” said Maffei. “He is not just an idea guy. He is a doer. We need more of those people.”
Riggot and others applied for a grant in January of 2017, and a grant was awarded in August of 2017 for $14,000. The volunteers then went up to Andover, where a similar boardwalk was created, and figured out “some strategies” for how to create it in Walpole. The committee then used the general boardwalk design from Andover for this boardwalk.
Once they received the grant, knew how to build it, and had enough workers, the group started building in the spring. Twenty volunteers have worked on the boardwalk, accumulating over 200 hours of labor thus far.
“There is no one person who did everything,” said Maffei. “We all have jobs … If this was our full time job, we could probably do it in a week-and-a-half.”
The boardwalk is about 90 percent completed, and they are hoping the rest will be completed by Jarvis Harvest. Maffei further explained how the boardwalk will change a person’s hiking experience in Walpole.
“Just imagine: you are on a hike and out enjoying nature … and you get to the end of the trail and it is a swamp and you have to turn around,” Maffei explained. “Not anymore. Now you can get to the end of the trail and keep going and explore Jarvis Farm.”
The boardwalk should have positive benefits for the community for years to come. It was truly a group effort for the common good.
“We are all kind of it in for the community,” said Maffei. “It’s nice to have your hand in something that will be here essentially forever.”
