04/04/2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: April 3, 2026
Trails K12 Returns This Spring with Trail-Based Field Trips for Rockingham County Schools
ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, NC — Most field trips take students outside their community. Trails K12 does the opposite. The Resilient Trails Network program is designed to help Rockingham County students develop a real sense of the place where they live.
Place-based education research shows that when children know their own landscape deeply, they are more likely to become engaged citizens and stewards of that place as adults.
The program returned to action recently when second graders
from Leaksville-Spray Elementary School spent the day on the Chinqua Penn Walking Trail in Wentworth. They left with gravel dust on their shoes and a story to tell.
Trails K12 was founded by the Rockingham County Education Foundation (RCEF) and transferred to Resilient Trails Network in 2025, ensuring the program could continue and expand as RCEF underwent strategic realignment. The partnership reflects a shared commitment to getting Rockingham County students on local trails.
The Chinqua Penn Walking Trail is the kind of place that does half the teaching on its own. Located on NC State University's Upper Piedmont Research Station, where traditional farm practices mesh with cutting-edge agricultural research, the land was once the Chinqua-Penn Plantation, a working farm of 1,000 acres owned by Betsy and Jeff Penn in the first half of the twentieth century.
These days, the trail is maintained by volunteers with Friends of Chinqua Penn Walking Trail.
Visitors are surrounded by wildlife, working farmland, and history. The trail follows farm roads and carriage paths dating to the 1920s, winds through old-growth forest and stands of bamboo planted by Betsy Penn, and passes stone structures built from locally quarried rock more than a century ago. Boardwalks cross streams and ponds, leading to a thirty-foot rock dam and waterfall. In nearby pastures, cattle graze, descendants of Jeff Penn's prized Black Angus herd from the 1940s.
Volunteers with Friends of Chinqua Penn Walking Trail led students on a guided treasure hunt of natural features along the trail. Afterward, students gathered for a storytelling workshop developed and led by the Rockingham County Arts Council, built around the monarch butterfly, her life cycle, her journey, and the friends she meets along the way.
The teachers and staff of Leaksville-Spray made it all possible, keeping 45 second graders engaged and giving volunteers the space to do their best work.
The storytelling workshop reflects the Rockingham County Arts Council's growing investment in place-based arts programming.
This spring, RCAC is launching a new countywide program in which students will collectively write the stories of fairies who live along a community trail in western Rockingham County. A local artist is being sought to translate those stories into permanent installations along the trail. The monarch butterfly workshop was a first step toward that work.
Resilient Trails Network intends to fund future Trails K12 field trips through proceeds of sales at Second Summit Outdoor Gear Thrift, grants, and donations.
Second Summit, located at Basecamp, 101 East Main Street in Mayodan, is just getting started and actively seeking donations of gently used outdoor gear to build its initial inventory. To make a donation to Second Summit or support Trails K12 field trips, visit www.theresilienttrailsnetwork.org.
Schools interested in scheduling a Trails K12 field trip this spring should contact Resilient Trails Network at www.theresilienttrailsnetwork.org or (336) 339-6169.
Resilient Trails Network builds professionally designed trails on school campuses and public lands across the North Carolina Piedmont, connecting communities through trail access, education, and stewardship.
Photo: Second graders from Leaksville-Spray Elementary School at the Penn Summer House on the Chinqua Penn Walking Trail, Wentworth, NC. Pictured with students, left to right: Jerry Snyder, Brooke Rhodes, Susana Martinez, Zaria Moore, and Aleia Knight. Not pictured: Amanda Ramey, teacher; Jan Bellard, Pat Hill, and Steve Planson, Friends of Chinqua Penn Walking Trail; and Jenny Edwards, Resilient Trails Network and Rockingham County Arts Council. Basecamp Rockingham County Education Foundation Rockingham County Schools Visit Rockingham County, North Carolina
