Enchanted Woodland Trail

January 21, 2021

By Jana Pearce, Visitor Experience Manager

The Enchanted Woodland Trail is a great way to stay connected to nature during the winter months, take in the often overlooked details of the forest, and receive the physical and mental benefits of being active outdoors not to mention celebrating magical, nature-inspired art!

An additional piece of magic that happens behind the scenes is the community the exhibit builds, not only between CNC and the participants, but also between neighbors. Below you can read a story from one of this year’s fairy architects, and the surprising connection she made while preparing for the exhibit.

“I was so excited to build a Fairy House for the CNC Enchanted Woodland Trail. The idea was to build a three-piece structure that could be assembled and disassembled easily for transport and set-up. I found a wonderful old hollowed out apple tree stump for the base, a ficus tree for the middle and built a big roof with the intention of it being removable. Well, my fairy house ended up being as big as my imagination (which is pretty big) and all did not go as planned. The ficus tree got lodged in the apple tree stump and wouldn’t come out no matter how hard we tried. After trial and error we realized that we had to attach the roof and keep it attached. Now, instead of transporting three components of the fairy house in my mini-van, we had one very large structure that was too big for my vehicle.

We panicked…how were we going to get the fairy house to the CNC? I placed an ad on Nextdoor looking to hire someone to move the fairy house. Then the most wonderful thing happened. Thomas Johnson, a man I had never met before offered to bring his truck and trailer to pick up and deliver the fairy house to the CNC. This was not an easy task because I probably didn’t tell you how much the fairy house weighed…it weighed a lot! Thomas helped us muscle our fairy house to its home at the CNC for the next 13 weeks. We asked Thomas how much we owed us…and he said, “Nothing.” Thomas asked that we make a contribution to our favorite charity. We could not have done this without him, and all he asked was for us to pay it forward. We will because of your help!

With gratitude,
The Nunn Family”