VIENNA — There is a guy who lives in Buckhannon, West Virginia that nobody in Maries County knows, but he knows there was a church in the county that handed out helium filled balloons on Halloween night. This guy knows where Vienna is because he found the tag that was attached to one of about 300 balloons given away at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce Trunk or Treat event on Halloween night.

The guy’s name is Jesse Reynolds. He’s 44 years old and he talks with an accent. Reynolds works in the oil fields in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio drilling natural gas wells. He’s been doing this for 20 years, working 14 days, then off for 14 days. He’s married and has four children, ages 19 to 2.

He has a cabin in Osceola, West Virginia, which is located in the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of which the Allegheny Mountain Range is part of. He hunted in the Monongahela National Forest. Reynolds said it’s a wilderness and there are no utility services there, but the cabin has a solar panel to give a few amenities.

On Nov. 25 he was deer hunting when he found the tag from the balloon laying on the ground behind a big rock. The balloon was no longer attached but the tag said Vienna United Methodist Church with the church phone number on it.

He says the deer don’t get as big in the Appalachian Mountains as they do in Missouri because Missouri has a lot of agriculture products the deer eat whereas in the Appalachians it is more rugged country. Still, Reynolds said he was pleased with the “decent eight point buck” he shot on the opening day of buck rifle season.

Back at the cabin, they tried to figure out where this balloon had come from. There is a Vienna, West Virginia, but the area code didn’t work for anyplace they knew. There was no phone service so they couldn’t Google it, but he did when he got home and found out Vienna, Missouri was 763 miles from where the balloon or tag had finally landed.

Only that balloon knows how it got from Vienna all the way to a national forest in the Appalachian Mountains, but then again, a balloon doesn’t know a thing actually.

This is not the first balloon Reynolds has found on that mountain. The local hunters make a sport of it because the mountains seem to draw the released/escaped helium filled balloons to them. The Alleghenies rise to about 4,862 feet in northeast West Virginia. He’s not sure why the balloons end up there, but maybe it is the atmosphere changes going over the mountain. His uncle whose birthday is Nov. 29 was out in the forest on that day and found a balloon that said, “Happy Birthday.”

Reynolds said he’s home now in West Virginia for the holidays and planned to be part of putting up the Christmas tree that night.

According to wikipedia, the Monongahela National Forest is a national forest located in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA. It protects over 921,000 acres of federally owned land within a 1,700,000 acres proclamation boundary that includes much of the Potomac Highlands Region and portions of 10 counties.

The Monongahela National Forest includes some major landform features such as the Allegheny Front and the western portion of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians. Within the forest are most of the highest mountain peaks in the state, including the highest, Spruce Knob (4,863 ft), also the highest point in the Alleghenies. Approximately 75 tree species are found in the forest. Almost all of the trees are a second growth forest, grown back after the land was heavily cutover around the start of the 20th century. Species for which the forest is important include red spruce (Picea rubens), balsam fir (Abies balsamea), and mountain ash (Sorbus americana).

The Monongahela National Forest includes eight U.S. Wilderness Areas and several special-use areas, notably the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area.