At this point in life I find myself living in Chattanooga, Tennessee--The Scenic City. I live within a mile of four huge bridges and each of them cross the expanse of the Tennessee River. My favorite is the Walnut Street Bridge. A sign, near the Frazier Avenue entrance to the bridge, tells me that the bridge is the longest pedestrian bridge in North America. It's a few inches shorter than a half mile. I walk across this bridge an average of twice a day. I've lived in Chattanooga for nearly a year. I've walked across the Walnut Street Bridge over 500 times. I've walked more than 350 miles on the Walnut Street Bridge. I'm still just beginning to get to know it. The girders and the planks. The lights and benches. The people, and the pigeons. The feel. The Bridge.

You've probably seen me walk across this bridge if you've ever been on it. I've got no particular time that I walk it. I've got no particular reason to walk it. Well, that's not entirely true. I do have reason. I've many reasons for walking the Walnut Street Bridge. Some of those reasons are probably the same reasons others might walk it. I exercise my body. I exercise my mind. I people watch. I water watch. I like the park. I like the rocks and water below. I walk it for good reason and for no reason. Like most bridges in my life the Walnut Street Bridge has become a friend, a confidant. Like most bridges in my life the Walnut Street Bridge has become more than the sum amount of its bolts, planks, nails, rivets, and beams. It is part and parcel of why I like bridges and what bridges do and what they represent.

I've lived close to a number of bridges in my life, but never so many at one time. I've lived near wood, steel, concrete, and even a rope bridge once. I once lived across the street from the longest bridge in Oregon one summer. The Astoria-Warrington Bridge joined mainland Oregon with Mainland Washington State. It was strange to have such a huge bridge just across a street from the large, picture window of my apartment on Marine Drive and watch it slowly disappear from sight when the fog rolled over the Columbia--strange indeed.

I climbed to the top of a huge, unfinished bridge near Franklin, Tennessee one night. It was exhilarating to climb and climb and arrive at the edge of an abyss. Nothing but space. It was a late June evening and warm without a breeze--until I got about half-way up the bridge and then I felt the sway of the wind against the gigantic, curved column. I was nearly 300 feet high and it felt multiplied. The moon cast its shine bright, but I brought a flashlight just-in-case. I didn't need it, but it was like a rabbit's foot and made me feel safer. I sat at the top of the edge of that unfinished bridge for a while and wondered if I would ever cross it when it was finished. I've never been back to cross that bridge.

I lived across the road from a railway in Northern Minnesota when I was a kid. Not a quarter of a mile up the tracks was a trestle that crossed a small gorge. There was a trickle of a river below. That bridge could not have been 150 feet in length and 40 feet high, but it might have been a mile wide and deep to a 7 year old. I remember how my heart would pound when I was walking, bare-footed and stub-toed, across that worn trestle. It may as well have been The Golden Gate as it seemed so immense and foreboding as it would compel me forth and onto its oil stained ties.

One sticky Minnesota morning I was just about at the half-way point in one of a hundred crossings of that bridge when I heard the scream of a locomotion. I looked down the endless tiers of railroad and stared as it barreled toward me. The train’s horn exploded again and brought me out of my freeze. I began to run, pell-mell toward the end of the trestle. I made it, pulse pounding and gasping breath, to the edge of the ravine and dove for the side of the tracks. About a minute later the train came plodding along with what appeared to be a grin across its engine front. The engineer waved at me as if nothing had happened. Of course I couldn't wait to tell all of my buddies that I had nearly been road kill on the Canadian Pacific line.

I remember another bridge that I haphazardly came upon when I was 21 and driving across the USA. This bridge was in a most northern location in the state of Idaho. At the time I was not a bridge buff, but was just starting to admire the want and necessity of the creatures. I was on State Highway 2 and had no idea where I was when I was treated to one of those sights only God and man can work together to achieve. Before I could gather my wits about me, I pulled over, parked and got out of my car brimming with what I've since learned to describe as "awe."

It would be pure speculation as to why I started down the edge of the gorge on the Eastern side of the bridge, but I did. Some four hours later, and the crossings of one tremendous dam, I emerged on the same State Highway 2 and started back east, across the bridge, and back to my car. I don't remember what I thought about while I was making my trek, but I do recall looking to the sky and hiking in the vast shadow of that gigantic, concrete vein that connected the two edges of that spectacular canyon in Idaho.

There seems to be some unwritten rule that we humans always have to make some point when we bother to write something down. As if just the act of writing is senseless and the idea of writing in the cause of simple 'therapy' is just plain, ol' silly. We are movers and shakers, we Americans. We are the Can-doers of the world. The people that move or rearrange mountains, rivers, valleys and the like. And, so it is that I do have a point in my meanderings about some of the bridges I've crossed in my lifetime.

Like the many bridges I've crossed within my lifetime so are the situations I've come upon. Like the chasms and voids that bridges are made to cross so is the ability to learn to cross the problems one runs into in one's life. When I come across a problem that seems too much for me to handle, too wide a breach in my emotional ramparts, I've learned that bridging seems to be the most effective way to fill in those voids--to cross the chasms if you will.

Like bridges, the materials one must use to join the disjointed gaps in life must be strong. Nature, we are told, will not allow a void. Nature will fill up or fill in a void, and so it is with people. We are still under nature's thumb to a degree and our lives will not allow a void. We will, sometimes at any price, attempt to fill a void within our life. It is how we fill the void that is importance. The materials we use, the way we go about it, the way we build our bridges to connect things put asunder back together again.

The way we construct our bridges is important. If we attempt to build our bridges quickly and in faulty fashion, they'll soon come apart and, once again, we are left standing on one side of life when we need to be whole. Like the builders of The London Bridge we need to place stone after stone into place in order to make sure that there are no empty spots that leave a weakness in our bridges. We cannot tarry, we cannot stray from our work--to build the bridges in life in order that we might cross the voids we will encounter.

But, more important than the way we construct our bridges are the materials we use to construct them. Like the strongest of bridges, we humans must use the materials that will stand the tests of time: the storms of life, high waters, the winds of change. One can construct one's bridges with flimsy goods like pessimism and anger. One can try to rely upon faulty thoughts and lies. But the bridge built with such material will not last any length of time. One can only use the best of one's materials in order to build the strongest most durable of bridges. Only a nail of truth can hold together beams of integrity and courage. Only the iron of intestinal fortitude can temper the compassion that is so often required to bridge a gap in one's life.

Everyone has these materials within themselves. They lie, often dormant and unsuspected, for many years until one must, often by the force of the moment, dig them out of the heart and soul and use them. Sometimes it is only by the events in life that seem so insurmountable that we realize that we can, in fact, surmount the event--by building that bridge. We can use those resources from within to change the way we perceive and handle things without.

I like bridges. I'm surrounded by bridges in my life--thousands of them. I can't remember a time in my life before I liked bridges and I can't foresee a time when I no longer care for them. I can't fathom the gorge so huge that we humans can't span. I can't entertain the thought of such a deep and darkened void that I can't build a bridge to cross it--to overcome it. I don't understand the idea of not wanting to accept the freedom in life that bridges, so consistently, give to us all.