It's a real nice thing to see local students getting together with the folks from the Cathance River Education Alliance this weekend to plant chestnut trees at the Cathance River Nature Preserve.

The American Chestnut, a stately shade tree by all measures, was pretty much wiped out over the course of the last century by a fungal blight, and you won't find a chestnut tree around today that amounts to anything more than a shrub.

I remember seeing huge chestnut trees (we're talking many, many feet around in girth) in the park near where I lived in N.J. as a youngster. And when the trees would shed their load of chestnuts, walking through the park was like trying to walk on huge ball bearings. Of course we kids also found the chestnuts very useful for throwing at passing cars, but that's another story.

This is nice effort, and I hope we can start to reverse the decline of the chestnut little by little. Kudos folks.

By the way, if you're looking for something to do on National Trails Day on June 4th, check out the guided hikes and trail maintenance that'll be going on at the Cathance River Nature Preserve that day.