Portraits of Adventure / BTA / Kim Love-Ottobre
Kim Love-Ottobre
Zoar, OH
March 2026
Kim took over as Trail Town Coordinator on what she calls a cold call. The position had been sitting vacant for a couple of years and a manual didn’t come with it. Six years later she's still in it, and she's already thinking about who comes after her, keeping detailed notes, working on succession, making sure the next person doesn't have to start from scratch the way she did.
Kim doesn’t report miles on the trail, or maintenance logs. She stewards something else, relationships. A Trail Town is a community that has formally recognized the Buckeye Trail as an asset, health, recreation, and economic draw. Kim's work is building and maintaining that relationship between the BTA and the towns. She attends Rotary meetings, participates in parades, attends village council meetings, all to make sure the people who live where the trail runs actually know the trail runs through their town. Her work is not often at the forefront when thinking about a multi-use trail, though it carries just as much weight.
When a town reaches out about becoming a Trail Town, Kim researches them before anything else. She'll look up the size, check whether they meet the requirements, and go back and read community meeting minutes to get a sense of who they are. The dedication ceremony, the proclamation, the ribbon, the official welcome, is the visible moment. The months of coordination with local government and small businesses is her work.
Kim is clear-eyed about the limits of a volunteer position. It runs on available time, and available time is always constrained. What she wants, if the resources were there, is simple: more time to show up. More capacity to be present in the towns, to attend the meetings, to keep the connections from going quiet.
She knows she won't do this forever. She's making sure the next person is left better prepared to take over.
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