The roads are still so bad that the final three students who live farthest away didn’t make it to school until last Wednesday. Town officials hope to have the roads passable in the next few weeks, before the first snow, but until then the children are walking through the woods.

It’s not a simple commute. Crawford Jones’s mother drives him from Mendon to a pickup area on Route 4, where the Gramps Shuttle van meets him and takes him down to the start of the path. There, a parent volunteer walks him and the others through the woods. A small school bus that can turn around in a tight space picks up the children and takes them to Sherwood Drive, where the big bus is waiting to take them to school.

One day after school last week, the bus arrived at the forest path and the students made a beeline to the refreshment tent. There were fruits and peanuts, but most favored the doughnuts, gummy bears and licorice. By the time they headed into the woods, sugar was oozing from their pores. Michelle Ericksen, a school board member who was accompanying them, caught Riley Bates, a second grader whose favorite classes are gym and recess, with an entire bag of gummy bears and confiscated them before he could rocket to the moon.

It was raining and muddy. Several of the girls, including Charlotte Tyler, a kindergartner, wore pretty boots, but not Riley, who said all he needed was sneakers. “If you walk around the house, the mud just wears off,” he said.

Along the way, they passed Darren Snitker, a contractor who has coordinated donations from the local businesspeople. He was spreading 12 truckloads of pine bark mulch along the trail, which made it less slippery but also explained why this wooded path smelled like the garden department at Home Depot.

Whatever children are doing seems normal to them, and for most, hiking through the woods has become routine. Asked how she does it, Charlotte, the kindergartner, said, “I just walk straight ahead.”

Ms. Prescott, the principal, believes their adventure stands for something a little more. Last week, when all 33 had finally made it to school, she held a special assembly to officially welcome them for the new year. As assemblies go, there wasn’t a lot of dazzle, no special effects, not one PowerPoint. She simply stood in the middle of the gym, and one by one called them down from the bleachers to be recognized for making it to school under difficult circumstances.