Purpose in community

Many people come to New Hampshire — or choose to stay — for the state’s natural beauty. Time spent in nature comes with real benefits, including reduced stress, improved mood, sharpened attention and increased empathy and cooperation. Nature is good for our physical — and emotional — health.

But nature is largely inaccessible to people with disabilities, including age-related mobility issues. A volunteer group in Ossipee is working to make sure that no one is excluded from nature.

The Friends of Constitution Park — led by super volunteer Edwina Boose — started by bringing people together to revitalize a town park that had largely fallen into disuse. People who did not know one another before worked together clearing trails, raising money and making a disc-golf course, pickle-ball courts and a dog park — and now greet one another by name.

And people who still disagree with one another about many things voted overwhelmingly at consecutive town meetings to raise and appropriate a total of $75,000 toward making Constitution Park’s Deer Run Trail fully handicapped accessible.

Ossipee Lake is a jewel bounded by a ring of volcanic hills. The Deer Run Trail leads to the only town-owned public access point to the waterfront. When work is complete, people in wheelchairs, with rollators or strollers will be able to reach the shore of Ossipee Lake and take in the sweeping view of the Sandwich and Ossipee ranges across the water. And the park is open to anyone — not just town residents.

The Charitable Foundation is helping to fund the construction of the accessible Deer Run Trail as well as similar projects around the state. The Foundation also supports the “Trail Finder” website that includes accessible trails, and technology that helps engineer trails for accessibility.

Matt Sawyer has been Ossipee’s town administrator for more than five years — and his family has lived in Ossipee since the 1700s. The volunteer-driven Constitution Park project, he said “has brought people together like nothing else I have seen in my time here.”

In July, volunteers will gather again — plumbers and businesspeople and teachers and retirees — and get to work making this natural jewel in this corner of New Hampshire accessible to everyone.