That You Are Here

Prologue Bridges. Driving through Portland, Oregon, that is what you see any time of day, anywhere you look. Bridges to the right, bridges to the left. Bridges to the north, bridges to the east. The types of bridges, the shapes of the bridges, are as numerous and diverse as the people living in the Pacific Northwest. Some are tall and intricately laced (the bridges, not the people). Others are lean and long (bridges or people). Some have double-leaf Bascule drawspans, some have vertical lift spans, some have tied arches. Locals can tell you which bridge is which, when it was built, what it’s made of. Commuters can tell you which bridges are under construction with curses beneath their breaths. The bridges are both structurally beautiful and practically sound, connecting one side of the Willamette River to the other. There’s the Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge. The Broadway Bridge and the Burnside Bridge. The Sellwood Bridge and the St. Johns Bridge. The Fremont Bridge, the Steel Bridge, the Morrison Bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge, the Marquam Bridge, and the Ross Island Bridge. When you live in Portland you get to know the bridges like personal friends. I have to check out Morrison today, you think as you head into Downtown. As you’re driving the one-way city streets, in a burst of inspiration under the struggling Portland sky that sheds more cloudlight than sunlight, you realize that life is full of bridges connecting you from here to there and back again. Some bridges you clasp on to, holding them tight, driving their lanes every day even if they lead you astray. Some bridges you’re reluctant to cross though your GPS tells you that’s the direction you need to go. Sometimes people, people you trust, even, will yell at you to avoid that route at all costs. Bad things happen when people go that way, they say, and you listen because it’s easier to be told what to think than to decide for yourself. Sometimes it’s your own thoughts that spin you in the wrong direction. If you’re lucky, one day, out of the blue, you find the bridge you’ve been searching for. Perhaps it’s the road not taken. Perhaps it’s the direction you’ve felt drawn toward your whole life but your uncertainty and fears led you astray. If you’re lucky, you’ll find the person, that one and only person in the whole world who can connect you from here to there so you can find your way to wherever it was you were supposed to be in the first place.