SAXTONS RIVER — Sunday, April 24, will be a busy day for Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association (WHPA) devotees and lovers of forests and cellar holes.
At 2 p.m., forester Silos Roberts and Andy Toepfer, who does natural-resource mapping and cartography, will lead a walk entitled “Whys and Hows of Forest Management for Conservation.”
The walk will feature sites illustrative of decisions and actions taken by WHPA to show the management of property for conservation and wildlife. Interested hikers should call Silos Roberts at 802-869-1388 for more information and registration. Attendees should dress for walking in the woods at this wet time of year and meet at Main Street Arts (MSA), 35 Main St., in Saxtons River, at 2 p.m. Hikers will return from the walk in time for WHPA's Annual Meeting and program lecture there.
At 4 p.m., the Pinnacle Association will host its annual meeting at MSA. Attendees can enjoy refreshments and view maps and materials. The short annual meeting will provide updates on recent accomplishments and project plans, and allow members to elect new representatives to the board.
The program portion will follow immediately. Renowned local historian Richard Ewald will present a slide lecture entitled “Looking into Cellar Holes: Foundations of Extremely Local History.”
A veteran of municipal government and nonprofit management, Ewald is also a federally certified architectural historian who has nominated many properties to the National Register of Historic Places. He is the author of Proud to Live Here, a regional history and a manual for historical preservation and economic development in Vermont and New Hampshire communities of the Connecticut River Valley.
A resident of Westminster West since 1978, Ewald will speak about the town's early settlement patterns as revealed through the study of cellar holes on the town's western ridge. Many of Pinnacle's hiking trails on the ridge are bordered by old stone walls and traces of the foundations of 18th- and 19th-century homesteads.
Ewald's program will be an opportunity to bring more meaning to ruins on Pinnacle trails and also serve as good background information for a visit to Cellar Holes of Old Grafton, a hike to be led by Richard Warren of Grafton June 4.