For many of us, the October snowstorm of 2011 is a bad memory: Power was out for days and thousands of trees were toppled or damaged.
Winding Trails, a nonprofit organization offering recreational programs and day camps in Farmington, was one of many hard-hit places.
The storm damaged or felled hundreds of trees across much of the organization’s 380-acre property.
Rather than dispose of all the dead wood, Winding Trails incorporated much of the fallen white pine and oak into its new educational building, its first new structure in years.
Winding Trails teamed up with E.R. Hinman and Sons, one of the oldest sawmills in the state, and recently completed a timber frame building known as “Nature’s Porch” along the banks of Walton Pond.
The building will function as a classroom and community gathering center as people walk across oak flooring and stare at walls made of white pine, all from trees recycled from the storm.
Read more of Peter Marteka’s story on courant.com