The ADT Journey – Week 44

Most hikers I suspect would view the North Bend Rail Trail as tied with the C&O Canal Path for the best hiking along the entire ADT route, edging both the Katy Trail and the American River Trail because of their paved surfaces.  I am not most hikers, I actually relish steep climbs, but I have to admit that the unimproved trail surface, easy grade, easy camping (once I figured out to avoid spring peepers) and the welcoming sunshine and buds of spring made for a blissful experience along the NBRT.

The tunnels topped off the experience for me.  In between tunnels I entertained myself by thinking about what I would say in my next narration.  Themes of railroads, kindness, animals and water experienced during our journey would end up in the movements for the symphonic journal I later created.  Two of the tunnels were about a third of a mile, requiring a good five minutes of getting through them with flashlight in hand.  Many greeted us with a small waterfall near the entrance, still cascading after the fierce storms we were able to avoid in Parkersburg, as well as being wet inside.

The trail brought us by quaint trail towns, converted from being former rail towns.  A mural in a Pennsboro cafe highlighted the embrace of this conversion by local proprietors.  I recall again the hassle Ky received from angry landowners when she ventured onto what would be a future rail trail in Kansas, and how formerly angry landowners became enthusiastic supporters of the Katy Trail in nearby Missouri, once the economic benefits from tourism became clear.  Such benefits are modest but sustainable.  Rail trails do not bring a boondoggle from extracting resources, but neither do they cause a bust.  How and why do the influencers of American society lead us to think that a growth boondoggle is better than economic diversity, community resiliency and small proprietor sustainability?

A reporter came out to Pennsboro to do a story on us, the first one since Indiana.  Looking back I am not sure why we did not have or apparently pursue publicity in Ohio, not even in Cincinnati.  My working theory is we were so glad to be trail hiking and camping again that I put publicity out of mind.  Readers of this account may find this ironic, or even doubtful, but by nature I am not a publicity hound, or at least publicity is only a means for me, never an end.  When Cindy’s cognitive decline suggested I needed to find different means of earning income in my middle ages, the research I did all came back to the need for publicity as a means.  I applied this lesson learned to validating our public mission for kindness and community.

West Union stood out as the largest town along the NBRT.  Here we met up with Sharon and Paul Weekley.  Even though they were members of the West Union Lions Club and should have been on my radar before our journey started, ironically Sharon contacted me instead and kept in touch since California.  Sharon first became interested in ADT hikers in 2006, when she met the mother and daughter team, Patty and Robin.  After hosting them she became involved with the ADT and searched the Internet for people aiming to start hiking the trail.  Once she became convinced they were legitimate she reached out to them, as she did with us.

Sharon arranged for me to speak at both the West Union Lions Club and Doddridge County elementary school.  In either case I now drew heavily from my experiences during the journey.  For a Lions Club I emphasize the lesson to “confuse who is giving and who is receiving” when building community.  For an elementary school I highlight the compassion and initiative of ten year old Ethan Roos for helping the homeless.

Our stay with the Weekleys was an “one of the family” experience.  I believe Ky got to spend even more time with them apart from us.  Sharon now has become the West Virginia Coordinator for the ADT, and additionally manages their public Facebook page.  So if you are reading this now Sharon, thanks once again!

Ky slackpacked us from West Union to Clarksburg, where the NBRT ended.  With spring in session we encountered increasing numbers of people in the small rail trail towns we passed through, including one person wearing a Monkees Tshirt.  I could not get the song “Last Train to Clarksville(burg)” out of my head after that.

We stayed at the Calvary UMC in Clarksburg, where Pastor Rod Heckert paid us a visit the evening of our arrival.  He asked how we managed to take a year off to tackle this journey.  I confessed we left careers behind (though I still was not making public that Cindy was forced to leave because of her cognitive decline) and were not sure where our income would come from when we returned.  I do not know if this was his intent all along, but Pastor Rod used our situation to underscore his sermon the following morning about “Leaps of Faith.”  He called us up to the altar for “show and tell,” but otherwise I did not have a speaking engagement at the Calvary UMC.

We left Clarksburg full packing, but at first made little progress.  Our route went near Clarksburg NBC Station WBOY and I decided to just drop in to offer them an interview.  To my mild surprise they ran with our story.  Shortly after that we were hiking along Main Street when a man pulled over in this truck and offered us salami and cheese.  About a mile later we stopped at Rollins Market to use their bathroom; before we left owner JoEllen, former owner Joe and employee Joanna made us bulky sandwiches from their deli to take with us.

The Life Hope Outreach Center was next door to Rollins Market; given our public mission this seemed like a must stop.  The Center ran a thrift store, using the income to in turn fund a food pantry.  In this manner they were wholly independent of any funding strings attached, which suited them just fine.

We spoke to Angela at the Center, while a teenager with high functioning autism named Billy also was there.  Billy collected ties that he intended to weave into a fundraising quilt for the center.  By the time we were there he had collected 2,216 ties.

We started heading out of Clarksburg around 1:30 pm, having only hiked about three miles.  I had to come up with a Plan B regarding where we might stay that evening.  Towards that end we stopped at Benedum’s visitor center in Bridgeport.  The director of the center tried hard to scout out a potential camping spot ahead on our route and was extremely apologetic not to succeed.  Instead, he put a blurb about our journey and mission on the visitor center’s web site.

Still at a loss for where we might camp that evening, we were taking a break on the lawn of a Baptist Church, which had a sign advising:  “Today, give yourself in God’s hands.”  This suggested an obvious parallel to the beginning of our day, when we became show and tell for Pastor Rod’s “Leaps of Faith.”  When we resumed hiking I had no worries about camping that evening.

Nor should I have had.  Apparently, Dave Alonso passed us while we were hiking soon after that and waited at the gate to his property for us to come by.  He actually was getting the property ready to sell, but offered his gazebo for us to spend the night.  He then brought us with him to pick up his wife Rosalyn and we headed back into Clarksburg for supper at McDonald’s.  Rosalyn wrote columns for five different papers and asked if she could write one about us.  After going publicity free through an entire state we received publicity three times in one day, through print, broadcast and web media.

The next day we hiked into Grafton, where our good friend and hiker Gwen Jones met us.  Listening back at a podcast I created about our eventful day hiking out of Clarksburg, I mentioned we would see our friend Gwen, though the rhyming of those two words together twisted my tongue and after a few attempts Cindy could be heard laughing and making comments in the background.  I knew at the time, while we were hiking, that Cindy improved during the journey, but going over some of the documented evidence provides even more certainty now.