1205. RI Walks Challenge - G rills Preserve
Hopkinton, RI
3/23/22

One of the cutest projects we have seen that started out during the COVID pandemic to get people outdoors a bit more exploring their local woodlands has been the RI Walks Challenge to find a metal carving of a "plant creature" attached to a tree in each of 30 different RI preserves! RIclimber was the one who alerted us to this project in the first place by planting letterboxes in four of the preserves over on his "eastern side" of the state. So, as if just going for a walk to see the rest of the "plant creatures" themselves on each of their lovely preserves wasn't enough, naturally we started thinking how cool it would be if all 30 of them could get little rubber stamp plant carvings to go along with those larger metal ones!

So, we picked the four preserves with "plant creatures" closest to us in our "southwestern corner" of the state, grabbed a carving tool and a few blank "travelin' lights" (small stones with pink carving rubber glued on back that we used to have ready for pre-pandemic trips abroad), hiked the trails to find the "leaf critters" and then on-the-spot carved a tiny "rubber plant replica" to leave nearby! With our carvings, finding the metal carvings would be the main focus of any of these short excursions, but we're hoping that the project might catch the fancy of other letterboxers as well, so that eventually all the preserves will be covered with at least one "rubber plant critter", and if some were to get more than one "variation on a theme", that would be pretty cool, too, to get to see people's various artistic interpretations of different plant creatures!

Anyway, to reach this particular whimsical plant creation, drive to the parking lot on the north side of the triangle at the junction of route 216 and Chase Hill Road (some folks may remember this as the place where the grilled pumpkins we replanted many years ago used to be;-), then follow the white-blazed trail until you find the metal carving on a tree! This is a good place for a picnic party, so just look behind that same tree for a small stone "travelin' light" with my carving reminiscent of blowing up balloons for sausage dogs and with only one carved face that I could manage to squeeze in between a plywood sandwich! Can you guess what it is really meant to be?

And now back to thinking how if everyone who boxes in RI picks a preserve or two at which to do a quick-carve "plant creature", we could quickly cover this whole RI plant project. Hope that happens!

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