The Bridge
On a recent Monday, I arrived home at twilight from “the Lodge” where Kit now resides and I spend hours each day. Routines keep me on track and Monday night is when waste containers need to be rolled down our steep driveway to the street in preparation for early morning trash pickup on Tuesday. Instead of going inside, I grabbed a garden rake and headed up to our meditation path, pulling our yard waste container behind me. As small piles of broken branches and pinecones were raked and deposited in the bin, I breathed in the fresh air and relished the quiet that is hard to find these days.
My meditation was broken when our neighbor Pete emerged to inquire about Kit and ask how I was doing. Our wonderful neighbors see me leave early and return home late. I’m fine I tell him. Just needed to be outside awhile and feel the evening air, still bracing up here in the Sierra foothills in late April. Before leaving, Pete pulls out his cell phone and shows me pictures of an historic covered bridge and a mosaic of spring wildflowers.
Where is it? I asked Bridgeport he says. Just take Ridge Road to the Rough and Ready Highway. At the T in the road, take Bitney Springs Road for awhile until you come to the South Yuba River State Park. How far is awhile, I ask, certain there is not a chance I’ll have time for such an excursion. All the while wishing that I could pack Kit in our car and do just that. Explore the backroads and hidden treasures of Nevada County that we’ve both missed this past year since his fall and steady decline.
By now I needed to roll the heavy container of yard waste to the driveway and deposit it on the street before dark. The bin was on its last leg two years ago when we moved in and that night as I turned it to begin its descent, one of the wheels flew off and disappeared into the encroaching night. Determined not to be defeated by a one-wheeled wobbling waste container, I inched it down to the street, then headed inside for a glass of chilled white wine by our cozy gas stove. Within minutes I’d exchanged texts with our neighbor Carol and plans were in place for a road trip to Bridgeport the next day.
The current issue of Destination magazine produced by the Greater Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce includes an article by Nevada County Historian Steve Cottrell, “The Bridge: The Indomitable Bridgeport Covered Bridge.” In his words, “It has withstood floods, fires, and threats of demolition. Still the 161-year-old Bridgeport covered bridge in Nevada County remains standing—a California Registered Historic Landmark, National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It spans the South Yuba River west of Grass Valley and is recognized as the longest single-span wooden covered bridge in the United States, including abutments. It is 233 feet in length with a 208-foot open span.”
Constructed in 1862 by David Wood, the bridge replaced a jerry-rigged ferry that had connected the two banks of the South Yuba River by cables and ropes. Elevated from the river’s high water during the winter, it was blanketed with more than 25,000 sugar pine shingles designed to protect the wooden deck and trusses from dry rot.
According to Cottrell’s article, the covered bridge was a key to a 14-mile toll road that ended at North San Juan, connecting with a road to Henness Pass where it crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains destined for the silver mines in and around Virginia City (in what would become the State of Nevada in 1864.) Tolls were collected at the bridge and soon paid for its $10,000 construction. (To see the bridge and learn more of its history, visit: southyubariverstatepark.org.)
After walking across the covered bridge, Carol led me along the Buttermilk Bend trail bounded by slopes abloom with redbuds and wildflowers on one side and breathtaking views of the travertine blue river downslope. In April the 2-mile roundtrip walk is a tapestry of lupine, tufted golden poppies, delicate fairy lanterns, tiny blue dicks, wild clover and geranium, and rocks covered with sage green lichen that look like pressed leaves.
At times it was just the two of us on the trail, buffeted by the late afternoon breeze and the mesmerizing sound of the river spilling over its bed of white rocks down below. For one delicious, restorative afternoon, I breathed in and out deeply as I have not done for weeks, months, and now a year since Kit’s fall. Before leaving, I walked back to the covered bridge alone.
Closed for renovation from 2011 until November 2021, it has been restored and is now like new again. Entering the honey-colored light within the bridge’s cathedral-like space, I walked to its center. Time fell away and in that instant I heard the bridge speak—
Eventually everything rots and fall, goes back to the water, to be polished like stones.
So today, I am asking, let me feel the weight of footsteps, test my strength, please let me carry you again.
(Kirsten Casey, Nevada County Poet Laureate 2021)