McHenry Girl Scouts thanked for their work to cheer up hospital walking path

The walking path at Northwestern Hospital McHenry was not a welcoming place for the nurses and patient families and Alanna Talles wanted to change that.

The quarter-mile, gravel-surface track wraps around detention ponds on the east side of the hospital campus, along Route 31. There was no signage, no benches, and little indication of being welcome there, Talles said.

As a former Girl Scout herself and now the manager of professional practice and development for the hospital, Talles wondered if a local troop would be interested in helping to make it a more cheerful and welcoming spot.

She reached out to Frances Mai-Ling, leader of the Spring Grove-based Troop 1888, and asked if the girls would consider decorating the path.

Now, next to trees, benches and other spots along the track, visitors find rocks painted with cheerful messages, sunny themes and positivity.

The Kindness Rock Garden invites those using the path to take a rock for inspiration, share one for motivation, or to leave one “to help our garden grow.”

“It feels good that they liked them so much to put them in their own yard, or to pick them up and put them somewhere else for someone to see.”

—  Girl Scout Troop #1888 member Keira Wallington

“Let’s paint the town with kindness,” the sign suggests.

“For five minutes before or after their shift, or on a break ... for even a couple of minutes, it is seeing something that makes you smile,” Talles said of the painted rocks.

Talles’ timing was perfect, Mai-Ling said. She and her co-leader, Mary Shufelt, were looking for a bronze project for the troop when she called last year.

As girls age through the scouting program, they can earn higher awards. For the bronze level, girls must put in 20 hours each of work, research and fundraising. The six junior-level girls were all able to earn that level, just before they will move on to Cadet level in middle school, because of the rock garden, Mai-Ling said.

They received their Bronze award pins this week from Kari Rockwell, Girl Scouts of Northern Illinois CEO.

To earn the award, they had to do more than paint rocks. They fundraised, found a donor to provide the larger rocks and signage, and researched how to paint the rocks so that it wouldn’t wash off immediately.

They placed them last year, said Keira Wallington, 11. Each tree and bench has one of the bigger stones next to it. Originally, the troop also left smaller painted stones along the path. Many of those have been taken by visitors, she said.

“It feels good that they liked them so much to put them in their own yard, or to pick them up and put them somewhere else for someone to see,” Wallington said.

The benches along the path are also newer, sponsored by the nursing administrative staff in early 2022, Talles said

It also is seeing more use, with families from nearby neighborhoods, the on-site day care center children, hospital staff and visitors using either the path or the benches when its nice outside, Talles said.

She’d love to see more people find the path, and bring rocks they have painted themselves or found elsewhere, Talles said.

There are Facebook pages where people in McHenry County share where they have found rocks painted by others along paths and trails, Shufelt pointed out. Usually, people then move the rocks to new locations.

“We want them to take ours, we also want them to come here to us,” she said.