Therese Ojibway lived near the woods of the South Mountain Reservation in Essex County, New Jersey. Her autistic son wanted to spend all of his time indoors and she wanted to encourage him to get outdoors so she started adding things to one of the trails. Whimsical tiny cottages that she built from hand and placed just off the trail. She called them fairy homes. The South Mountain Conservancy noticed these cottages and then learned Therese was hand-making the little fairy homes. They contacted her and she told them why. So not only did they allow her to continue place her cottages on the trail, they told their members about it and they started adding to it as well. The magical kingdom Therese was trying to build for her son is now known as the Fairy Trail.
"She thought this was a dynamic way of getting little children into nature, getting them to use their imaginations, getting them to tap into their creativity and stimulate both early childhood and special needs children," said Beth Kelly, another trail keeper.
This happened 10 years ago. Therese and her son retired back to Michigan a few years ago, but today hundreds of autistic children visit the fairy trail every year for a very special day.