It snowed weakly midweek, and winter is expected to try again this weekend to assert itself with a storm. But the season is pretty much used up, and even little songbirds are scoffing at it these days with spring songs. We all want to get out into the sun, which has successfully angled for a stronger position in the sky over the past month, and to stretch our legs in a pretty place to walk. Perhaps that was the impulse that inspired one Newtown resident to show up at the Parks and Recreation meeting last week to offer his time and talents to the cause of trail development in Newtown.

Scott Coleman’s generous offer was timely, not just because of the seasonal shift. It coincided with the renewed wish by the commission and its director, Amy Mangold, to revive the town’s defunct Trails Committee to maintain, promote, and expand the system of trails in Newtown. That system has been built around the backbone of the 8.5-mile greenway from Reed Intermediate School to the Upper Paugussett Forest named Al’s Trail in honor of another volunteer trail advocate, the late Al Goodrich.

A confluence of other events also appear to make this a propitious time for trailblazing in Newtown. An 18-acre parcel on Great Quarter Road in Sandy Hook was recently purchased by the town, connecting municipal property at Eichler’s Cove to the Lower Paugussett Forest. The town’s Parks and Rec crews are also constructing a mile-long round-trip trail from Dickinson Park to the Village Cemetery property at the Ram Pasture on Elm Drive with the help of a $40,000 grant.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for a new Trails Committee would be the extension of the 16-mile north/south greenway corridor once used by the Housatonic Railroad, now known as the Rail Trail, which currently ends at the Newtown/Monroe border. Joggers, hikers, and bicyclists of all ages will be enjoying the trail in Bridgeport, Trumbull, and Monroe this spring. The continuation of the trail into Newtown, however, has been blocked in the past by parking issues and, as always, a lack of financing. More significantly, the abandoned Batchelder aluminum smelting plant property, a brownfield site off Swamp Road, stands in the way.

But something happened this week in another pretty place to walk, Colorado, that may brighten the prospects for the stymied Rail Trail in Newtown. President Barack Obama signed into law a sweeping $787 billion economic stimulus that includes, in among those many billions, $100 million for brownfield projects.

With the cooperation and coordination of a revitalized Trails Committee, the Economic Development Commission, and the Inland Wetlands Commission, the town may be able to put together a reclamation and conservation proposal for the Batchelder site that just might attract some of that federal money, opening up a path not only for Rail Trail hikers to Monroe, Trumbull, and beyond, but to the resolution of Newtown’s longstanding quandary of what to do with a contaminated industrial site. It may be a long shot, but the first step along that difficult trail, as Scott Coleman showed this week, is a willingness to rise to a challenge.