Day 2 – Petroleum, WV to Belpre, OH

A cold night makes for a very effective alarm clock. We emerged around 5:30am, just as pre-dawn light repelled the dark of night, and awkwardly fumbled through the deconstruction of our sleeping set-ups with stiff and uncooperative fingers. It was good to be moving, blood flowing, and back on the trail.

While we had a large town, Parkersburg, lined up as our day’s destination, the journey there was unceasingly rural, encountering no towns of any real size along the way. Fortunately, the trail was lined with handy picnic benches and we had plenty of food in our packs, so we ambled along, resting regularly, and taking in the quiet trail. 

Shortly before reaching the second-longest tunnel on the NBRT, I managed to track down a rarity–another walker! This was awkward timing. He entered the tunnel around 20 feet in front of me. How to handle this? Is it more awkward to pass a stranger in a dark tunnel or to consistently lurk behind them all the way through it? I opted for the latter, keeping a flashlight on so that he could see my safe distance. Shortly after emerging, I pushed forward and offered a greeting. He reciprocated and asked if I had a cigarette. I asked how far he was going; he was out early, in the middle of nowhere, which made me wonder if he was doing a multi-day trip, but his pack seemed too small for it. He said “down the road a bit” and left it at that. The conversation stalled out and I wished him well, continuing onward.

Near the village of Walker, Fritz and I took a break at a trailhead, just as two older men drove up in a Jeep. We quickly fell into conversation. Robert and Buddy weren’t out for a long walk, but it was a big walk for both of them nonetheless. Both had experienced significant health issues in the last few months, and for Robert in particular this was his first walk on a trail since January. It wasn’t just the hernia surgery that he had in January. No, as Robert declared, “I was Covid patient #14 in the county.” He wasn’t alone. His aunt was one of 53 seniors infected in a retirement community. Despite that, he thought the seriousness of the disease has been overblown. Not only did his 83-year-old aunt live in a retirement community, she was also a long-time smoker with emphysema. “If it should have killed anyone, it should have killed Aunt Ethel.” Instead, he explained, after a few days of treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, she was back on her feet.

Robert was enthusiastic about my walk, sharing that a few years ago he actually walked the Appalachian Trail. He had covered more than 1400 miles when, late one afternoon, in the gloaming, he misjudged a descent through boulders and plummeted headfirst, shattering his ribs and injuring his arm in the process. He somehow staggered onward to camp and then waited for another walker to help him advance to an exit point afterward. When I noted my ambivalence about whether I should be on the trail or not, he went out of his way to encourage me to continue, telling stories from his own adventures as inspiration. I can’t do them justice here, but let’s just say that the centerpiece involved four indigenous Alaskans with machetes, a chieftain’s daughter, a cooler full of moose meat, and a rifle.

Finally defrosted, I started to take in more of the trail. When I was here before, Sharon bemoaned the fact that through-hikers miss West Virginia’s true splendor by passing through so early in the year. I could now see what she meant. Wildflowers lined the trail–small yellow, white, and purple buds that speckled in the long, green grass, while trees waved vibrantly overhead. Birds chirped constantly; I was struck in particular by a vibrantly red and black bird (a Scarlet Vanager?) that became an increasingly common companion over these next few days.

Hours passed and I was surprised to find that first walker in front of me once more. He smiled in greeting, surprised that I was still going. The ice was finally broken and we fell into conversation. It turns out, he was walking from Pennsylvania, where he had been living when the pandemic hit. After trying to wait it out for weeks, he finally decided that returning home to Parkersburg would be a better option. With no public transportation linking the towns and no fund to pursue other options, he decided to walk. His friends got him a map and showed him which road to follow back to West Virginia; from there, he worked his way to the North Bend Rail Trail. I didn’t ask, but it was clear–there’s no chance that his small backpack could be hiding a tent or a sleeping bag, let alone many changes of clothes. For all of my whining about a cold night in my bivy, this dude walked for a week with practically no supplies, living almost exclusively out of gas stations. He didn’t even seem to have a water bottle. I showed him how to find his way off-trail to a Family Dollar; he bought a 12-ounce can of pop.

In the final miles of the NBRT, with the sun blazing overhead on a lovely Sunday afternoon, we encountered one family after another, walking and bicycling, often with multiple dogs on leash. While I might have harbored some concern that people would be particularly distrustful of a stranger with a backpack during this time, every family we passed offered a cheerful greeting and wished us a good day.

Sadly, the trail didn’t actually lead us all the way to Parkersburg. Instead, we had to join a highway for the final approach. Stay-at-home order or not, traffic was steady and the shoulder was often quite limited, but we pushed steadily onward, crossing US50 and finally descending into town. By contrast to the highway, the town was nearly empty, with very few people on the street. 

We didn’t linger. Instead, we quickly wove through the center and then climbed to the bridge leading over the Ohio River and into Ohio. Finally, some two months behind schedule, I completed West Virginia. It felt damn good.