Posted May 15, 2025 – Narrated by Jim
“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”
Some of the world’s greatest stories involve bridges.
Building bridges…
capturing bridges…
crossing bridges…
and lighting them afire.
For better and worse, bridges establish challenging and sometimes incompatible connections.
“Burning Bridges” can mean a bad decision made in haste or it can mean a deliberate act of self-renewal.
For my great-grandparents, bridges were the closest thing to flying.
Bridge-builders are the wizards of travel alchemy.
Foot bridges…
arched bridges…
steel deck bridges…
suspension pedestrian bridges…
cabled bridges…
famous bridges…
old bridges…
modern bridges…
remote bridges…
and even piers and docks perform the impossible, if only for a momentary retreat…
to expand your horizons.
Every bridge crossing is an epochal moment…
a promise to transport you…
into the future.
“Praise the bridge that carried you over.”
Bridges fascinate us, even if it’s only a few logs thrown over a puddle.
Maybe that’s because we put a great deal of blind trust in bridges.
Collapses are not uncommon.
If a bridge falls there’s nothing but the sky to grab onto.
Bridges describe the delicate condition of one’s connections to friends, family and career – especially when the bottom drops out.
Our long blissful stretch of halcyon years on the road came to a screeching halt in 2023 when Carmen’s camera and purse were stolen from our truck in Memphis. The thief broke the Beast’s driver’s side window while we were swimming at the Y for physical therapy. We were both lame that Fall – Carmen with an episode of plantar fasciitis and me with gout. We spent our coldest winter ever in Gulf Shores and then in February ’24, our old neighbor Mojo Nixon died unexpectedly, then Pico de Gallo in May (one year ago today), my nephew, Van Carter, a week later, and our dear friend KB Mercer in September.
Back in San Diego in mid-summer to nurse our broken hearts, Carmen had two freak accidents two weeks apart. She suffered head injuries, a broken left hand and dental injuries (no bicycle or wilderness hiking involved. Ironically, “safety” infrastructure got the best of her– a handicapped picnic table and a traffic barrier arm). Now – thanks to a long winter’s rest in our sunny and warm Chula Vista sanctuary – we are healed and back on the road traveling north through wine country toward our son’s wedding in San Francisco.
We crossed our Bridge of Sighs and were granted a reprieve.
That old idiom, “water under bridge” describes the living energy of the past, something forgiven, if not forgotten.
If we could only see the treasury of memories bridges hold!
The Bridges of Madison County is a charming small town story about forbidden romance and a tender secret held by a prim tight-lipped covered bridge.
Bridges are to be praised for carrying our weight.
A Red Hot Chili Peppers bridge holds the weight of past mistakes.
An Adele bridge holds the anguish of unrequited love.
A super-powered Simon and Garfunkel Bridge will hoist you over a rough spot.
Classic literature often compares journeys and crossing bridges to enlightenment and death.
In Japan, bridges are a symbol of transience and a link between the earthly and the divine realm.
Soribashi, the arched bridge, is the focal point of any Japanese garden. It is a metaphor for life, death, and ascension to paradise.
The arch, projected over water, creates the reflection of a circle image, or eye, to remind us of the transience of life’s highs and lows. The past and the future are circular, predictable.
While future details may be obscured, they are hardly unknown. Yep, I’m talking about death and taxes.
TobiIshi, stepping stones, is a sectional bridge. This explains the progression of life from one phase to the next toward one’s ultimate reward… Social Security 😉.
The significance of flat bridges, hirahashi, is straightforward. It’s an elegant statement about expedience and economy. Time’s a’ wastin’. Cut to the chase.
A bridge, obviously, has two sides attached to countering abutments. But there are also two sides to the deck.
On a river there is the downstream side …
and the upstream side …
Since ancient times these four distinct quadrants or realms have been mapped in the Medicine Wheel, the Four Rivers, the Cross, and the compass.
Where does “Water Under The Bridge” fit into the equation?
Is it a 5th realm?
A portal to another dimension?
Water is a universal mystery, used in ritual ceremonies worldwide since prehistoric times.
It is the most revered element on earth.
Think about bridges enough and everything will start looking like a bridge. Education, marriage, starting a family, retirement… The Rig.
Beauty and the Beast are our Bridge to Adventure, our Boredom Evacuation Plan.
This year – more than ever – our Forever Camping lifestyle is fueled on spontaneity – what young people call “random-whatever.”
In this, our “no green bananas” life-phase, planning ahead is more like wishing – and in fairy tales wish-amounts are limited – so we keep our schedule flex.
Next year Beauty will officially be “vintage,” 25 years old.
This year she got her first bathroom remodel. In October Vinnie’s Northbay Airstream Repair will install new awnings.
Had I known when we started out that we’d be Forever Camping ten years later, I might have shopped for a younger trailer. But Beauty is family, and age becomes her.
Lately it seems like “fluid” describes almost everything – wars, timetables, leadership, the economy – whenever the word “unstable” would suffice. One thing I have observed is that wherever there is fluidity there will be bridges.
Carmen and I cannot see the future, but our footing is secure and we will begin this new chapter of our Living in Beauty epoch…
One bridge at a time.
You can see our exact route on this map.
*photos in this post (unless otherwise noted) were taken and copyrighted by Living In Beauty.
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