The Buckeye Trail
“Everyday Trail Hero’s”
Sharing the work and the people behind a fourteen hundred mile trail.
I met Aidan Reagh, the Marketing Coordinator for the Buckeye Trail Association, at the OOREC conference in Athens. We talked about the Buckeye Trail, the people who care for it, and the sheer amount of unseen work required to keep a fourteen hundred mile trail connected across Ohio. That first conversation set everything in motion. A few months later, I was invited to Trail Fest to speak about photography and meet more of the volunteers who hold this trail together. Since then, I’ve photographed headshots for the organization, partnered with them as their contracted photographer, and continue to serve on committees as this project grows.
Portraits of Adventure exists to tell real human stories, and the Buckeye Trail has an entire community of them. These are people who give their time to a trail that connects towns, neighborhoods, farmland, forests, and river corridors. Some repaint faded blazes. Some clear debris after storms. Some show up at local events to help people learn that a long distance trail is right in their backyard. Most of the effort is quiet and easy to overlook, but without it, access to the trail changes quickly.
The Buckeye Trail Association has woven this portrait series into their outreach because it helps them show the real people behind the trail. They use the images and stories throughout their biggest annual fundraising campaign, on their website, in their magazine The Trailblazer, and across social media. The video we created together has become a tool for engagement, helping them share the work of their volunteers with donors, hikers, and anyone curious about the trail.
These portraits give the trail a face. They highlight the people who keep the Buckeye Trail open, cared for, and worth returning to. They show the culture that makes this trail possible. The Buckeye Trail
People are the story. Make them visible.
Employees, community members, customers, they’re the ones who give your work meaning.
Gallery
Richard Morgan
Caldwell, OH | October, 2025
Richard didn’t grow up dreaming about hiking the Buckeye Trail. He didn’t even start hiking seriously until his early fifties. What pulled him in wasn’t some big life shift. It was curiosity. He just kept wanting to see what was around the next curve, and before he knew it, he’d walked thousands of miles across Ohio. He talks about it like it’s nothing. “I’m just walking,” he’ll say. But seven thousand miles is not nothing.
His section tells a different story about the work. Richard spends countless hours clipping briars, clearing branches, repainting blazes, and cutting out downed trees after storms. It’s the kind of work hikers rarely notice because it’s done right. They pass through in seconds without knowing how long he was out there keeping the path clear. He doesn’t complain about it. He just shrugs and keeps going.
The trail has handed him strange little moments along the way. A logbook entry thanking him for a well kept stretch. A random hiker who becomes a partner for twenty six mile days. A blimp hangar tour because he happened to walk by at the perfect time. That’s how Richard talks about the trail. Not dramatic. Not poetic. Just real. Just a life built out of small miles, steady work, and a curiosity that never really stopped.
Vicki Proctor
Great Miami River Recreation Area, Dayton, OH | September, 2025
Vicki talks about the trail the way someone talks about a place they’ve spent a lot of quiet hours in. There’s no big speech behind it, just a clear sense of what the work actually looks like. She knows her section well enough to picture exactly what happens if nobody shows up for a few weeks. Branches start leaning in, weeds take over, the path closes itself off. It’s the kind of knowledge you only get from being out there often enough to see those changes happen in real time.
What stands out is her practicality. She doesn’t make the work sound heroic. It’s clipping, clearing, checking on things, and doing it regularly so hikers don’t feel abandoned out there. She thinks about the people who pass through, section hikers, thru hikers, and how different their experience is when the trail feels cared for instead of forgotten.
Vicki’s perspective comes from years of showing up, even when no one sees it. She understands how quickly a trail can disappear without steady hands on it, and she steps into that gap without needing recognition. Being with her makes it clear that stewardship isn’t a grand idea. It’s slow, patient work, and she’s someone who’s learned to keep at it.
Cindy Sommers
Ash Cave, Hocking Hills, OH | October, 2025
Cindy likes to joke that she is “not a speaker,” but her work carries a steady voice across the Buckeye Trail. As chair of the Central Ohio chapter, most of what she does happens far from the public eye. She is the person reading every email, answering questions as they come in, tracking event registrations, checking weather, and making sure each hike has the right details in place. It is quiet work, but without it, the community would drift. The newsletter would not go out, people would not know what was happening, and engagement would slip away.
Her own story with the trail began the same way she hopes others will find theirs: through a simple introduction. She remembers not being able to hike long days, not understanding how big the community was until she showed up at Trail Fest and felt the scale of it. That memory shapes how she plans things now. Her new project, Scioto Saturdays, breaks a full section into six shorter hikes so beginners can take the trail in smaller steps. Finish one section, she says, and people fall in love. Then they get involved.
Cindy’s work may be administrative, but its outcome is physical. It shows up as new hikers, new volunteers, and new reasons for people to care about the trail.
Raman Ras
Skok Meadow Trail, OH | October 2025
Raman has a calm way of moving through the world. When you talk with him out on the trail, it feels like he’s already settled into whatever the day is going to give him. No rush. No big declarations. Just a steady presence and a genuine curiosity for the spaces he walks through.
He talks about hiking the same way most people talk about their daily routines. It’s not something he performs. It’s something he returns to. A way to clear the noise and check back in with himself. You can tell he’s someone who notices the small shifts in things: how the light hits the water, when the wind changes, when the trail bends in a way you didn’t expect. He doesn’t make these moments sound dramatic. He just observes them, and somehow that simplicity makes them feel more real.
Raman’s connection to the trail feels personal in a quiet way. He’s not chasing miles or trying to prove anything. He just likes being out there, putting one foot in front of the other, letting the landscape open up however it wants. Spending time with him reminds you that adventure doesn’t need to be loud or extreme. Sometimes it’s just a person who knows how to listen to the world around them and keeps showing up for it.
Diane Wright
Great Miami River Recreation Area, Dayton, OH | September, 2025
Diane’s section of the Buckeye Trail looks simple at first. It follows paved bike paths, sidewalks, and small towns rather than deep forest. But that surface level view hides the work she carries, which is almost entirely human. Diane maintains relationships the way others maintain footbeds and bridges. She stays in touch with park staff, hiking groups, partner organizations, and the constant flow of people who discover the trail for the first time in her section. For her, a well kept trail is as much about connection as it is about terrain.
As an ambassador, she loves watching someone realize that adventure is waiting right outside their door. Hikers stop at her booth, or join a holiday walk through a small town lit with luminaries, and say, “How did I not know this was here?” She has seen those same people return, posting that they are 40 miles in, then 200, then volunteering at Trail Fest because the trail changed something in them.
The Buckeye Trail changed Diane, too. A ten mile COVID walk with her husband shifted how she sees herself and the world. Now she gives that same opening to others, guiding them, welcoming them, and quietly shaping their first steps on a trail that reshaped her own life.