A preliminary walk on the North Bend Rail Trail

 

Looking at a guidebook, the trail looked inviting: Several tunnels, picturesque small towns. It would be an inviting and pleasant stopover while traveling. Since I was planning on spending the night in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a remote sport about half an hour away would be a good stopping place I reasoned. The North Bend Rail Trail is a 72-mile trail was once a Baltimore & Ohio line constructed in the 1850s, with several tunnels and bridges.

I stopped in the small hamlet of Ellenboro, immediately found the trail and parking lot, and began walking east. Most of the first mile was adjacent to a drilling company, where several trucks were parked on a gravel lot. A small stream, Hushers Run, ran along the other side of the trail. A belted kingfisher cried as I walked past. Although not seen, its crime of alarm meant I was observed. A RV park that had seen happier days, containing a dilapidated playground and several vehicles that had not been attended to in quite some time, was on the edge of Ellenboro. Soon enough, however, I was out of the town, somewhat away from the road, and considering the area. In just a matter of a few days I had traveled from the opulence of the Connecticut shore to the poverty of rural Appalachia. Abandoned buildings, houses and cars dotted the landscape. Crows perched atop many structures to give an eerie feeling of foreboding. A rather large black object rushed out of a tree about twenty yards ahead of me, causing me to come to a stop. It was not a single object, but a group of a dozen blackbirds, which can be collectively referred to as a murder. The repeated appearance of crows was like films in which a plague had beset the land, especially in medieval times. Remembering Covid, perhaps the impression was not wrong.

The only people I met on the trail was about two miles from the start. A couple walking the opposite way, a young man who appeared to be prematurely graying and a woman were walking the opposite direction. She followed a few steps behind and looked at me warily as I exchanged greetings with him. He was carrying a small backpack and a blanket thrown over one shoulder. An assignation alfresco perhaps? I walked on another three quarters of a mile and turned around at mile marker 36, presumably the halfway point of the trail. My pace is fast and soon I had caught up with the couple. They had been joined by another woman who had a leashed dog manically barking at the man, until I was observed and then turned its attention to me. The dog’s minder was relatively young woman, missing several teeth. She was endlessly amused by the dog’s frantic barking and behavior. I greeted the group again, which was returned heartedly by the new woman. With a surge in the delta variant of Covid, I wondered, did the crow presage a new phase of the pandemic? How could effective information reach people such as these, isolated and prone to bad information? And would they ever trust those who delivered it?