BETHEL – Ways of the Woods: People and the Land in the Northern Forest, the Northern Forest Center’s mobile museum about forest heritage and culture across northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, will be set up at Telstar High School on Thursday and Friday, May 15 and 16.

In addition to hosting school groups both days, the Northern Forest Center’s staff is inviting the public to tour the exhibit during a free open reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, May 15. The reception will feature light refreshments and traditional music by fiddler Patrick Ross.

“We created Ways of the Woods to help people appreciate the past, understand the present and plan for the future here in one of America’s most important and rapidly changing forest regions,” said Mike Wilson, senior program director for the Northern Forest Center, which maintains offices in Bethel and in Concord, N.H.

“Through our visits to schools across the region, we’ve seen again and again that kids here really do have a strong connection to the forest around them,” he said. “It’s exciting to see how Ways of the Woods helps them realize this and share their feelings with their friends and families, and it’s especially inspiring when they bring their parents back to share the experience.”

More than 45,000 people in 45 Northern Forest communities have toured Ways of the Woods since its launch in summer 2006. The exhibition combines multi-media displays housed inside an 18-wheel tractor-trailer with interactive outdoor displays, artifacts and children’s activities to explore the changing relationships between people and land across the Northern Forest region.

The Northern Forest Center created Ways of the Woods through collaboration with scores of heritage organizations across the Northern Forest and with major financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In addition to its school visits this spring, Ways of the Woods will visit 20 fairs and festivals across the four-state region through the summer and fall.

The complete 2008 tour schedule and updates are available at www.northernforest.org. Any school or organization interested in hosting Ways of the Woods in 2009 should contact Tour Manager Carolyn Graney at 207-824-8263 or [email protected].

The Northern Forest Center is a non-profit organization that mobilizes people to build healthy communities, economies and ecosystems by working together across the Northern Forest region.