There are four bridges that separate me from the ocean by foot. It is faster to travel by water, but this is not a boat story. One of my joys is leaving my house and charging those bridges. I mean running over them. Running on the margin that is their ascending and descending right of way, running on the ledge next to the railing, sure-footed and steady, blink-waving at the questioning faces of oncoming drivers. Smiling. These bridges, they are my kin.
With the view, the sounds, the smell, even the in-your-face, gale force wind, the Crystal Coast bridges fill me with a sense of alive that is hard to explain if your feet and body aren’t soaring in step with those pavement mountains, best profiled when you are moving towards salty spray and tide.
My father was a bridge builder, calculating the angles and dimensions for the footings, piles, abutments, and culverts, making the math work so that the structure held firm, so that the algebra and trig cemented the span. My DNA coded me with the “word” gene. I cannot assemble the equation to build more than a metaphor, so I move across the bridges and tell their story. This is my place in the puzzle that connects the asphalt across the waters. I respect the simple beauty of a good bridge, of a vision created, a mission completed, of my complicated dad.
As I pass the miles that lead me to the sea, I keep list of what I find discarded on bridge and road. This download of mental finds keeps me entertained and flexes my middle-aged memory. It is comparable to a live cardio application of word crush, sans the wifi and screen.
On a run last winter I encountered: a pot holder, a pile of embroidery yarn, a possum and seagull (probable vehicular homicide,) a red and gray flannel shirt, one windshield wiper, two towels, a North Face beanie, one charcoal gray ski glove, a cooler lid, and a full, 2-liter Pepsi. My favorite of all finds happened on this December day when I discovered a pair of Levis, leather belt still in the loops, dropped in a hurry near the guardrail at the base of the Morehead City high rise. Scattered not far from the pants scene were two mid-rise black athletic socks, accomplice or witness to those bridge britches.
I had to take a picture of those jeans. How did they get there? Were they abandoned out the window? Were they lost out of a truck bed? Did they end up roadside on purpose or by accident? That is the way with litter, sometimes you intentionally discard it and sometimes it carelessly leaves your possession. I have participated in both of these acts, although I try hard not to litter, there are times I can’t find my potholders, gloves, or cooler lids, and I know they have gone to reside elsewhere. These losses were not premeditated. They were a mistake.
There have also been times I deserted things that I didn’t want to deal with, because, well, because I didn’t want to deal with them. It might have been as simple as a canvas raft with a slow leak or as big as a tire after a flat. Either way, I was aware that I was ditching them, making them another’s property and problem. I am openly admitting that my objective was dishonorable. Someone has to deal with the tangible.
And, perhaps the same is true for the intangible.
What if litter isn’t just palpable? What if litter is also emotional and mental? What if we throw words out the window onto the roadside and landscape of conversations and online mediums and keep driving like a bat out of hell, moving away, leaving the carnage and debris for others to see and notate as they run? What if it isn’t what we carry that defines us? What if it is what (and how) we leave our discards behind? This is a grown-up concept. We are ultimately responsible for our own actions and words. No one else – just us. This means that what I place out there – could be big, like vacated old cars that clutter the world in the form of hate or Hershey’s Kisses’ wrapper tinfoil tiny, squirming from my pocket when I am unwilling to interrogate my own implicit biases.
At the foundation is the overarching truth that you carry and scatter the words and behavior that projects to the world who you are at your core.
I am a rescuer … of things, pets, ideas, and people. I have a rocking chair and a set of steps that I claimed from their beside the road resting sites. I hope the people that passed them along are happy knowing that they were recirculated into the greater universe. They have gone on to serve me well as their second owner. I have also unearthed ideas and thoughts and benevolence that others have thrown with positive reckless abandon, boosted by the good kind of in your face, gale force wind.
I am a recovering litterer and am striving to serve humanity with a vigilant heart and soul.
Hopefully, the things you are secreting into the world, emotions, thoughts, words, past belongings, can be used for a bigger good.
Employ those things you both leave and find to build your bridges. I will lace up my sneakers and run over them, fueled by high-performance joy.
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