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Orono Bog Boardwalk director Jim Bird, right, instructs several incoming U Maine freshmen regarding various boardwalk improvement projects --including leveling a new pile of gravel near the boardwalk's utility cabin Saturday afternoon, August 28, 2010. U Maine first-year students spent several hours Saturday performing community service at different sites in the Greater Bangor area. (Bangor Daily News/John Clarke Russ) Buy Photo

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Under the supervision of Orono Bog Boardwalk director Jim Bird, right, incoming U Maine freshman Duncan Mixer, left, of Kezer Falls, ME, flattens an old nail before re-nailing a side board to level two sections of the bog walk Saturday afternoon, August 28, 2010. Mixer and other U Maine first-year students spent several hours Saturday performing community service at different sites in the Greater Bangor area. (Bangor Daily News/John Clarke Russ) Buy Photo

ORONO, Maine — Duncan Mixer on Saturday did what few people are allowed to do — stepped off the boardwalk and onto the bog.

The first-year student at the University of Maine was not breaking the rules of the Orono Bog Boardwalk, he was helping director Jim Bird repair Section 351.

That section had slipped and there was a 1½-inch gap between it and the adjacent section. It was important to repair the gap since it could cause people to trip and make it more difficult for wheelchairs to navigate that area of the boardwalk, Bird said.

Neither man’s feet actually touched the peat. Both stood on wooden planks placed on the bog while they leveled the section on the backstretch of the mile-long boardwalk.

“This would be a great place to have a picnic,” Mixer, 18, of Kezar Falls said as he headed back to the start of the boardwalk in Bangor where dorm mates were spreading gravel. “The view out here is wide-open. It’s awesome.”

Mixer was one of about 1,200 of the 1,837 first-year students at the University of Maine who headed out into the community Saturday afternoon to perform service projects for 37 nonprofit groups, according to Lisa Morin, coordinator for the Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism.

Students who did not participate either did not take part in orientation or had another activity, such as practice for a team sport, scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

This was the first time a community service project was included in orientation weekend activities for first-year students, she said. Assignments were made according to which dorm students are residing in this year, Morin said last week.

“It’s been a big undertaking,” she said. “The response from the community has been great. We intentionally looked for fairly small nonprofit organizations we knew could use the manpower.”

She said that in most instances five or six students from the same floor of a dorm were assigned to a project to allow students to bond with the people they will be living with for the next nine months. Students wore T-shirts with the names of the halls where they are living on the front and the letters FYRE — First-Year Resident Experience.

Mixer, a mechanical engineering major, said he enjoyed getting out of Somerset Hall.

“I don’t know much about this area,” the Oxford County resident said, “so this is a good way to get to know the community. Now that I know about this bog, I’m definitely coming back.”

Joshua Bailey, 20, of North Hollywood, Calif., was one of half a dozen first-year students from Knox Hall who volunteered at the Children’s Area at the American Folk Festival. Bailey and his dorm mates helped children make musical instruments out of cardboard tubes and oatmeal boxes.

“This is pretty good,” he said Saturday, surrounded by children. “It’s a good way to give back to the community.”

Morin said last week that the university planned to continue the service projects during orientation weekend in the coming years.

Other sites where student teams volunteered included Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, Spruce Run, Manna Ministries, Hands of Hope Store, Good Samaritan Agency, Penobscot Job Corps, Bangor Humane Society, Ronald McDonald House, Challenger Learning Center, Fields Pond Audubon Center and Parkside Children’s Learning Center.